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Facebook will use these sources to notify its users about the US election winner

Of all the weeks in 2020, this one sure has felt the longest of them all.

The eyes of the world are trained on the US right now as the votes for which party will govern the nation and who will take the desk in the Oval Office are counted.

Unfortunately, this election has been marred by misinformation, outright lies and stoking of fears by the incumbent.

On that note, knowing who actually won the election is going to require a bit of work on the part of reliable news organisation and more importantly social media.

As we’re all well aware of at this point in time, social media is rife with misinformation which is why Facebook has revealed which sources it will use to showcase the winner to its users.

A spokesperson for the social network told The Verge that it plans to showcase the name of the winner at the top of Facebook and Instagram profiles. That notification is expected to read “A Presidential Winner Has Been Projected — <name> is the projected winner of the 2020 US Presidential Election”.

In order to make that call Facebook will lean on major news outlets for information.

Those outlets are:

  • Reuters
  • ABC News
  • CBS News
  • Fox News
  • NBC News
  • CNN
  • The Associated Press

This election period has not been an easy one for Facebook but we have to commend how active it has been.

The social network has added “friction” to how election news is shared in a bid to encourage folks to seek out more information before blindly sharing it. It also banned the “Stop the Steal” group which was 361 000 members strong and was alleging ballot fraud with little to no evidence.

This is over and above measures it outlined in October.

Twitter is also actively flagging misinformation as such and trying to decrease its potential reach.

YouTube however is an unkempt disaster with lies about the election spreading particularly through One America News Network.

The network has repeatedly uploaded videos to YouTube claiming Trump has won and there isn’t even a misinformation box such as those we’ve seen when a creator so much as mentioned “COVID-19” in a video.

As of 08:42 on Friday morning Biden leads with 264 Electoral College votes versus Trumps’ 214.

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