Fake election news got more attention than did real stories on Facebook during the final months of the US presidential campaign, according to an analysis published Wednesday by BuzzFeed News.
The tech news outlet found that the 20 top-performing bogus stories from hoax websites and extremely partisan blogs generated slightly more than 8.7 million shares, reactions and comments at the leading social network in the three months before the November 8 election.
In comparison, the 20 best-performing election stories from major news websites including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Huffington Post got just shy of 7.4 million shares, reactions and comments at Facebook, according to BuzzFeed.
Prior to the final three months of the presidential campaign, top election stories from major outlets had strongly outperformed fake news, BuzzFeed reported.
Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg last week rejected the idea that bogus stories shared at the social network paved a path of victory for Republican President-elect Donald Trump.