The social media website Facebook accidentally deleted posts by its founder Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, including two messages he had posted concerning the spread of fake news on the website and their role in the US presidential elections, according to dpa. Facebook, which restored the posts later during the day, said that the posts had disappeared due to a bug in the website's system, according to a statement sent to dpa. "These posts were removed by mistake," Facebook said. "This was caused by an error in one of our systems and the posts have now been restored." The company added that "around ten" of Zuckerberg's posts had been affected, including two that were dealing specifically with the issue of fake news. In one of the posts published a few days after the US presidential elections, Zuckerberg said he doubted that the outcome of the elections had been affected by the spread of fake news on Facebook, noting that 99 per cent of what users saw on the website was authentic. In the other message, posted about a week later, Zuckerberg announced plans to combat the spread of fake news. During the election campaign, Facebook had been accused of doing too little to prevent false news stories from spreading on the social media network.
