Faceoff: Combating fake news on Facebook

Laura Edelson, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science and engineering at NYU Tandon and co-founder of Cybersecurity for Democracy with Damon McCoy, professor of computer science and engineering and a member of NYU’s Center for Cybersecurity, spoke with CBS Sunday Morning's David Pogue (beginning at 3:30 of the segment) about the profit motive behind the promulgation of misinformation on Facebook.

“Yes, there is a profit motive,” says Edelson, describing how “Facebook is a user-interaction maximizing machine… that’s what Facebook is built to do… and user attention gets sold in the form of advertising."

She added that misinformation, in general, gets more shares, comments, and likes, than factual content, citing her recent study in which she found that misinformation will get six times the engagement versus factual information.