Fake News: Facebook DID NOT Hire Drax The Destroyer To Distinguish Between Satire, Fake News

Fact Check

  • by: Alan Duke
Fake News: Facebook DID NOT Hire Drax The Destroyer To Distinguish Between Satire, Fake News

If only this one were true! A trending story on social media claims that Facebook has gotten serious about fighting fake content, but not punishing those great producers of satire at the same time. Lead Stories, however, can report that the social platform has not enlisted the help of Drax the Destroyer to help sort out fake news from the more welcomed satirical content.

The trending story is itself satire, not really "fake news." Although this Lead Stories writer is struck by the resemblence between Drax and our co-founder Maarten Schenk. The story originated from an article published on July 27, 2018 titled "Facebook Hires Drax The Destroyer To Distinguish Between Satire, Fake News" (archived here) which opened:

MENLO PARK, CA--Facebook has hired the fierce warrior Drax the Destroyer as its new Head of Satire Detection to help the company and users at large distinguish between satire and fake news, the social network announced at a press conference Friday. The notorious literalist will comb through viral stories rapidly spreading across Facebook and flag ...

Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:

Facebook Hires Drax The Destroyer To Distinguish Between Satire, Fake News

MENLO PARK, CA--Facebook has hired the fierce warrior Drax the Destroyer as its new Head of Satire Detection to help the company and users at large distinguish between satire and fake news, the social network announced at a press conference Friday. The notorious literalist will comb through viral stories rapidly spreading across Facebook and flag ...

But "The Babylon Bee" comes with following dislaimer on every page:

The Babylon Bee is Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire.

Some of their greatest past hits include:

With a track record like that it is clear that you shouldn't take anything posted on the site seriously and you definitely shouldn't confuse it with real news.

We wrote about babylonbee.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:

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  Alan Duke

Editor-in-Chief Alan Duke co-founded Lead Stories after ending a 26-year career with CNN, where he mainly covered entertainment, current affairs and politics. Duke closely covered domestic terrorism cases for CNN, including the Oklahoma City federal building bombing, the UNABOMBER and search for Southeast bomber Eric Robert Rudolph. CNN moved Duke to Los Angeles in 2009 to cover the entertainment beat. Duke also co-hosted a daily podcast with former HLN host Nancy Grace, "Crime Stories with Nancy Grace" and hosted the podcast series "Stan Lee's World: His Real Life Battle with Heroes & Villains." You'll also see Duke in many news documentaries, including on the Reelz channel, CNN and HLN.

Read more about or contact Alan Duke

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