Time for a vaccine against fake news

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Facebook elicited some laughs when it announced its grand strategy to discover which media publications were trustworthy in January. Detailed in a post by its founder Mark Zuckerberg, the plan would decide which stories would be prioritised in Facebook's revamped newsfeed.

It was also simple. Users would be shown a list of news sources and asked two questions: Had they heard of them and did they trust them?

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on March 12, 2018, with the headline Time for a vaccine against fake news. Subscribe