Facebook is granting social scientists studying the effects of fake news on social access to the network 's private data . Gary King , director of Harvard University 's Institute for Quantitative Social Science , is examining whether it is possible to develop rules to classify whether news is true or false , rather than just an opposing ideology . He has co - founded Social Science One to give researchers unprecedented access to Facebook user data in a bid to establish whether such rules could then be applied universally to determine whether a report is fake or not .
Facebook is granting social scientists studying the spread of fake news on social access to the network's private servers. Gary King, director of Harvard University's Institute for Quantitative Social Science, is examining whether it is possible to develop rules to classify whether news is true or false, rather than just an opposing ideology. He has co-founded Social Science One to give researchers unprecedented access to Facebook user data in a bid to establish whether such rules could then be applied universally to determine whether a report is fake or not.