Palo Alto – In a conference call with reporters, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged to crack down on the fake news sites that spread political lies during the 2016 U.S. election, now that the real news would be bizarre and terrifying enough to do the trick.
“Previously we’ve enjoyed seeing millions of people share false stories about Hillary Clinton’s sexual history or Barack Obama being born in . They’ve really increased user engagement,” said Zuckerberg. “But now that real news sites are putting out articles about anti-semites running the white house and the government registering people based on their religion, we think we’ll still get the clicks and shares we need.”
“Can you imagine how many people are going to share the 100% true article about the United States invading Canada for its water when it comes out,” he added.
From now on people looking to get riled up by outrageous stories of sexism, racism and political misconduct will be forced to read the New York Times and Washington Post.
The proprietors of the fake news pages say they are outraged by the decision.
“This is completely unfair. We are satire, just like the Onion,” said Steve Benoit of realnews.bbc.gov. “The satirical point we are making is that people are stupid and believe whatever we tell them. See, satire!”
Zuckerberg admitted there were still some kinks in the system. A recent CNN.com story on Trump appointing a racist, KKK supporter as attorney general was inadvertently deleted from the social media site after being flagged as too ridiculous.
