What are we learning about misinformation and disinformation on Facebook?

Can these social media giants be trusted?

That's the topic on this week's reliable sources podcast.

I'm your host Brian Stelter.

And this weekly podcast is our chance to go more in depth

with media leaders and newsmakers.

There's a lot of news right now about Facebook as well as other platforms like

Twitter and how they are trying to respond to an ongoing pollution problem.

So much misinformation and

and hoaxes and threats that spread on social media. Renee DeResta

studies this for a living. She's the director of research at New Knowledge and the head of

policy at the nonprofit data for democracy. Renee, thanks for joining me today.

Thanks for having me, Brian.

Renee, every day I feel like there's another headline about bad practices, bad behavior, bad news

involving Facebook.

This week, of course, the middle of November here, There's a damning new story in the New York Times about how the company has tried to get out of crisis after crisis

How did you react to the New York Times story? What did it tell you?

Oh gosh, I was shocked. You think you're past shocked, but then you're not.

I was on the other side of that for a large part of 2017 and that's because those of us who research this problem

had begun to have a much clearer picture of what had happened on Facebook than the company was

was validating or was putting out.

And so we saw it as something that had had massive impact.

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