Zuckerberg seems to be downplaying Facebook's fake news problem, and I'm not particularly optimistic about Google taking it seriously either. Software engineer

Zuckerberg seems to be downplaying Facebook's fake news problem, and I'm not particularly optimistic about Google taking it seriously either. Software engineers are smart- software engineers who work for Google and FB especiallly so. It isn't inconceivable that they, and the people they know, are smart enough to see right through fake news, and that the idea that anyone can be fooled by fake news is probably absurd to them. Unfortunately in the real world, many otherwise normal, functional people just aren't equipped to do basic fact-checking. Just yesterday, I got a forwarded fake news meme from my uncle, about a woman who had 11 babies[^]. My uncle, in his 50s, is a college dropout and of above-average (though not stratospheric) intelligence. He is simply not equipped (along with many others I know) to deal with a world where hostile, greedy and mischievous actors are working to shape their reality. This is an example of where some diversity would help improve tech. The monoculture at the top seems to have isolated the industry from its customers and their intellectual weaknesses. [^]It happened to be a Whatsapp family group, so I was able to see the story and tell him it was fake...my FB feed is already filtered to hide that sort of junk.