Zuckerberg: Facebook Hoax News Did Not Get Trump Elected

(RTTNews) - Mark Zuckerberg has defended Facebook Inc.'s (FB) role in the U.S. presidential election and said it was extremely unlikely that fake news and hoaxes changed the outcome of the election in one direction or the other.

The CEO of Facebook was responding to criticism of the social networking giant's role in the "historic" presidential election, which he noted has been "very painful for many people."

Facebook has been criticized for playing a role in the spread of false or misleading stories leading up to Donald Trump's election victory.

"Overall, I am proud of our role giving people a voice in this election. We helped more than 2 million people register to vote, and based on our estimates we got a similar number of people to vote who might have stayed home otherwise," Zuckerberg said.

He emphasized that more than 99 percent of the content people see on Facebook is authentic, while only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes.

Zuckerberg noted that while some hoaxes can be completely debunked, a greater amount of content, including from mainstream sources, get the basis idea right with some details wrong or omitted.

A greater volume of stories express an opinion that many people with disagree with and also flag as incorrect when factual.

However, Zuckerberg added that Facebook has launched work that will enable its users to flag hoaxes and fake news, though he also noted that identifying the "truth" is complicated.

"We hope to have more to share soon, although this work often takes longer than we'd like in order to confirm changes we make won't introduce unintended side effects or bias into the system," Zuckerberg said.

The CEO added that Facebook must be careful to ensure it does not overstep its boundaries when it comes to freedom of speech. He noted that Facebook must be extremely cautious about becoming "arbiter of truth ourselves".