Fake News and the News Feed

7 Pages Posted: 25 May 2019 Last revised: 10 Nov 2021

See all articles by Bidhan Parmar

Bidhan Parmar

University of Virginia - Darden School of Business

Benjamin Leiner

University of Virginia - Darden School of Business

Jenny Mead

University of Virginia - Darden School of Business

Abstract

Tessa Lyons was a rising star at Facebook. She had been the project manager in charge of news feed integrity for a little over a year, stationed at the front lines in the battle against misinformation and “fake news.” However, in early 2019, she faced an ethical dilemma that could define her tenure at the company and perhaps her career: whether to ban Alex Jones and the content from his platform, Infowars, from the Facebook news feed.

Excerpt

UVA-E-0429

Rev. Jul. 24, 2019

Fake News and the News Feed

Tessa Lyons was a rising star at Facebook. She had been the project manager in charge of news feed integrity for a little over a year, stationed at the front lines in the battle against misinformation and “fake news.” However, in early 2019, she faced an ethical dilemma that could define her tenure at the company and perhaps her career: whether to ban Alex Jones and the content from his platform, Infowars, from the Facebook news feed. As she took a sip of her cold brew, Lyons knew she had many ethical and strategic considerations to ponder before she made her recommendation to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

History of Facebook and the News Feed

Mark Zuckerberg first conceived of Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004. His first website was called FaceMash and was constructed as a “hot or not” website to rate the attractiveness of women at Harvard. After taking down the website, Zuckerberg redesigned it as an online portal for Harvard students to connect with one another. Within one month of launch, half of Harvard's undergraduates had registered on “thefacebook.com.” By December 2005, the company, which had moved to Palo Alto, California, dropped the “the,” purchased the domain name “facebook.com,” and had six million users. As of Q2 2017, Facebook had reported over two billion users worldwide.

. . .

Keywords: Facebook, social media, politics, female protagonist, community standards, community management, ethical dilemma

Suggested Citation

Parmar, Bidhan and Leiner, Benjamin and Mead, Jenny, Fake News and the News Feed. Darden Case No. UVA-E-0429, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3393819 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3393819

Bidhan Parmar (Contact Author)

University of Virginia - Darden School of Business

P.O. Box 6550
Charlottesville, VA 22906-6550
United States

Benjamin Leiner

University of Virginia - Darden School of Business

P.O. Box 6550
Charlottesville, VA 22906-6550
United States

Jenny Mead

University of Virginia - Darden School of Business ( email )

P.O. Box 6550
Charlottesville, VA 22906-6550
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
2
Abstract Views
442
PlumX Metrics