Mark Zuckerberg Rescinding Facebook’s Partnership With Rappler As Fact-Checker Is Satire

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Mark Zuckerberg rescinding Facebook’s partnership with Rappler as a fact-checker is satirical news. There is no truth to a report that Facebook’s CEO was taking back its deal to work with Rappler on its fact-checking project just days after the two announced the partnership.

Where did this satirical news originate? The Adobo Chronicles published the satirical news article on April 14, 2018, reporting that Zuckerberg was rescinding a partnership between Facebook and Rappler with regards to their fact-checking project. You can read the satirical news below.

SAN FRANCISCO, California (The Adobo Chronicles, San Francisco Bureau) – For CEO Maria Ressa, being designated as a fact-checker of news on social media by no less than Facebook, is quite a feather on Rappler’s cap.

But Ressa’s pride and prejudice is about to abruptly end.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told The Adobo Chronicles that he was rescinding Facebook’s partnership with Rappler.

It all started when Rappler published a fact-check article describing as false news an Adobo Chronicles’ post claiming that Ressa was elected president of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP). It was, of course a satirical piece, a spoof on Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque’s statement that Rappler, whose media license was revoked by the Securities and Exchange Commission, could still cover Malacañang as a member of FOCAP, since it was partly foreign-owned.

However, there is no truth to the above story. Facebook announced on April 12, 2018, that it was partnering with Rappler and Vera Files for a third-party fact-checking program in the Philippines. This partnership is aimed to prevent false news from spreading on the social media platform. Rappler and Vera Files have been certified through a non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network and will review news stories on Facebook, check their facts, and rate their accuracy.

Rappler is an online news website based in the Philippines with a bureau in Jakarta, Indonesia. It started as a Facebook page named MovePH in August 2011 and later evolved into a full-blown website on Jan. 1, 2012. along with web based text news content, it was also among the first news websites in the Philippines to extensively use online multimedia including video, pictures, text and audio. It also uses social media sites for news distribution. Facebook has many partners with its fact-checking.

“Partnering with third-party fact-checking organizations is one of the ways we hope to better identify and reduce the reach of false news that people share on our platform,” said Clair Deevy, Facebook Director for Community Affairs for Asia Pacific. Rappler CEO Maria Ressa hailed the partnership with Facebook. “It’s what journalists do, and we’re happy to work with Facebook to help create a safe and sane public space for critical thinking and debate,” Ressa said.

Here are some examples of people sharing the satirical news on social media.

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Finally, and most importantly, the Adobo Chronicles identifies itself as a satire website:

NEW FORMAT: The Adobo Chronicles has recently adopted a new format to help readers distinguish between fact and fiction. Statements and paragraphs in our posts that are in italics represent the facts. The rest are fiction.

What did you think of the satirical news that Zuckerberg had rescinded Facebook’s partnership with Rappler as a fact-checker? Did you believe the satirical news or see people sharing it falsely on social media? Let us know in the comments section.