Having been at the centre of the fake news allegations especially with respect to the US presidential election of 2016, Russia says it is now dedicating a part of its foreign ministry website to combatting fake news. Now Russia has been accused of meddling in European and American elections among others as the Kremlin continues to deny all of those allegations.
On the website, they identified articles from The New York Times (NYT), NBC, Bloomberg and the Telegraph as being fake with a big red “FAKE” stamp on each of those articles. One of the articles referred to news that Russia might be considering returning NSA leaker Edward Snowden back to the United States in a move that could be seen as Russia cozying up to the US in a sign of co-operation with the Trump administration.
According to The NYT, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said “the aim (of the new section on their website) is to demonstrate the main trends in fake news publications about our country and do everything to stop their dissemination….. we will publish examples of propaganda hoaxes from various media outlets and give links to sources.”
While the Obama administration placed additional sanctions on Russia before handing over to the new Trump administration, the European Union has set up its own task force called East Stratcom to fight fake news from Russia.
As it stands now, many now see that fake news could be the problem and that’s why big platforms like Facebook and Google have said they’ll do something to fight the trend. Google and Facebook to check fake news especially in the upcoming French presidential election. The new service aims to ensure hoaxes, rumours, and false claims are swiftly debunked, and misleading or confusing stories are accurately reported.
The ruling party in Germany is teaming up with political data science experts to combat the trend too.
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Paul Femi Balo is the founder and publisher of TechBooky. He covers artificial intelligence, African technology, digital infrastructure, enterprise technology and the global digital economy.
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