Google, YouTube, and Facebook don't find misinformation and hoaxes quickly enough after tragedies, may need breaking news teams to scan for misleading content
In the first hours after last October's mass shooting in Las Vegas, my colleague Ryan Broderick noticed something peculiar …
BuzzFeed's proposal — standing breaking news teams that scan for misleading content in the first hours after a tragedy — is an argument that those ranking-level patches can't cover the gap, because the failure mode is speed: hoaxes outrun both algorithms and fact-checking pipelines during exactly the window when public attention peaks.
First-order effects
Facebook, Google, and YouTube would take on direct editorial headcount and response protocols for breaking events, converting crisis misinformation handling from an automated byproduct into a staffed function with named accountability.
Ryan Broderick's reporting gives the platforms' existing crisis pledges a concrete test they currently fail, raising the immediate reputational cost of leaving Safety Check and trending modules unmoderated in the first hours.
Second-order effects
Twitter and other platforms face the same expectation by comparison — once one major platform staffs breaking-news review, rivals that rely on post-hoc takedowns look negligent in coverage of the next tragedy.
Human review teams shift the economics of crisis response toward newsroom-style operations, pressuring platforms to partner with wire services and fact-checkers rather than scale moderation queues designed for routine content.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds across Las Vegas, the New Zealand livestream, and shooter-glorification videos, crisis misinformation becomes a distinct product category inside trust-and-safety orgs — with its own staffing, latency targets, and possibly regulatory scrutiny separate from everyday content moderation.
The deeper structural question is whether platforms accept editorial responsibility at moments of peak attention, effectively becoming publishers during crises while still claiming distribution neutrality the rest of the time.
The trend: Social platforms are being pushed from purely algorithmic feeds toward human editorial intervention at moments of peak public attention, with each tragedy exposing the latency gap faster than ranking fixes can close it.
Why can't platforms deal with fake news that trends on major stories? It's simple. They're allergic to editorial judgement. http://www.buzzfeed.com/...
The latest cycle following national tragedies: 1)Facebook, Google, Twitter promote blatant lies & toxic conspiracy theories 2)journalists call them out after doing simple searches 3)tech giants issue non apology, promise to improve 4)repeat https://www.buzzfeed.com/... By @cwarz…
today i wrote about how journalists, academics, and researchers are doing a better job spotting fake news and conspiracy content after tragedies than the multi billion dollar tech companies http://twitter.com/...
More @cwarzel goodness. We've contacted thousands of companies in the last 15 months and no one has been more tone deaf and resistant to change than tech companies. It's not that they can't change, it's that they don't think they need to. http://twitter.com/...
Google and Facebook and Twitter can't monitor all of the content on their platforms posted by their billions of users. But policing what's trending is another matter. Clearly, it can be done because people are already doing it. http://www.buzzfeed.com/...
This is on point - current efforts to address misinformation based on links or even text-based content need to quickly expand to images and memes or they're going to miss some of the most influential content on the internet. http://twitter.com/...
‘This use of doctored images was a crucial and deceptively simple technique used by Russian propagandists to spread fabricated information during the 2016 election, one that exposes a loophole in tech company defenses.’ http://www.wsj.com/...
Lots of other stark examples of visual disinformation. Yesterday it was conspiracies about David Hogg. ( https://www.wsj.com/... ) Here's a @Poynter piece today about a false video circulating Facebook about Sylvester Stallone. ( https://www.poynter.org/... Plus)
“People will watch cat videos endlessly, but they won't take a minute to ascertain whether what they are being told is true or not.” https://www.wsj.com/...
For example, Black Matters US took an authentic 2013 image of a Nigerian boy and created a meme with a false stat on the life expectancy of black American men. Photographer wasn't aware until @WSJ called. https://www.wsj.com/... pic.twitter.com/Yif8sfT52W
Russian propagandists used a simple technique to get around Facebook's filters: Post doctored photos. Here's a photo taken at a pro-immigration rally, and an altered version that appeared on a Russian-linked Facebook page. https://www.wsj.com/... pic.twitter.com/qjjEKr6NVO
Facebook told us that they're going to include images and photos in fact-checkers queues in coming weeks & discussed the issue with them earlier this month. https://www.wsj.com/... pic.twitter.com/RkQXbWATrG