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Obama tried to give Zuckerberg a wake-up call over fake news on Facebook

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gestures while addressing the audience during a meeting of the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Ceo Summit in Lima, Peru, November 19, 2016. REUTERS/Mariana Bazo

 Nine days after Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg dismissed as “crazy” the idea that fake news on his company’s social network played a key role in the U.S. election, President Barack Obama pulled the youthful tech billionaire aside and delivered what he hoped would be a wake-up call.

For months leading up to the vote, Obama and his top aides quietly agonized over how to respond to Russia’s brazen intervention on behalf of the Donald Trump campaign without making matters worse. Weeks after Trump’s surprise victory, some of Obama’s aides looked back with regret and wished they had done more.

Now huddled in a private room on the sidelines of a meeting of world leaders in Lima, Peru, two months before Trump’s inauguration, Obama made a personal appeal to Zuckerberg to take the threat of fake news and political disinformation seriously. Unless Facebook and the government did more to address the threat, Obama warned, it would only get worse in the next presidential race.

[vc_btn title=”Continue reading” style=”outline” color=”primary” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Fobama-tried-to-give-zuckerberg-a-wake-up-call-over-fake-news-on-facebook%2F2017%2F09%2F24%2F15d19b12-ddac-4ad5-ac6e-ef909e1c1284_story.html%3Futm_term%3D.aef371967f56|title:Continue%20reading|target:%20_blank|”][vc_message message_box_style=”outline” message_box_color=”blue”]WashingtonPost.com, excerpt posted on SouthFloridaReporter.com, Sept. 25, 2017[/vc_message]