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Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Facebook wants to fight the 'fake news' from Barcelona

Por Nina

Facebook, a natural habitat of the fake news, has proposed to fight against them and will do so, in part, from Barcelona. The technological giant will establish offices in Agbar Tower (also call Glòries Tower) to fight against false news after having already installed similar ones in Germany, according to the economic newspaper Cinco Días.

In the coming months, it will be established in the Glòries Tower, which was to host the European Medicines Agency if Barcelona had been chosen as the new headquarters. It will do so through the company Competence Call Center, which rented eight floors of the emblematic building, about 9,000 square meters, which belongs to the Merlin Properties real estate.

The company will hire about 500 people. Cinco Días does not confirm if the center of Barcelona will assume the functions of the one that is now in Essen or if it will perform the same functions, such as deleting harmful content. The strategy of the social network is to end economic incentives; create new products to stop the spread of false news; and helping people to have more information when making decisions when they find false news, as announced in early April.

The false news has acquired special relevance after the race to the White House between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016, with accusations between both candidates during the campaign. They are pieces of pseudo-journalism, generally spread through news portals and, above all, social networks. Its spread and viralization through Facebook has put the social network at the target of the accusations.

In fact, Facebook already announced in September that it intended to fight against false news among Spanish users and in April the European Commission gave the networks two months to present their plan to fight against false information. The Councilor for Tourism, Trade and Markets of Barcelona, Agustí Colom, has celebrated that Facebook has chosen Barcelona to launch a false news control center and has said that the City Council will contact the company to help and facilitate its "Landing" in the city. "It seems to us great news that is going into the economic dynamics of the city, which has not stopped attracting investment in recent years," said Colom in statements to the press on Monday. He also stressed that it is good news for an emerging sector such as the new technologies. In this sense, he has assured that it is an opportunity to give out "the talent of the city and the environment", with the aim of having an important job development, and has insisted that Barcelona is an open and tolerant city, and who wants to contribute to rigor on the Internet.

Colom explained that the consistory has worked with the company that owns Glòries Tower to find a "solution" to the empty offices, because after being discarded as the headquarters of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), it is conceived as a multi-tenant space to house Offices. "We hope that the work we do will materialize in the coming days with new investments," he assured. Barcelona is a city to take into account for companies that want to make new investments, he added.

On the other hand, the largest opposition party, the PDeCAT, has also positively assessed the arrival of Facebook. The spokesman of the municipal group, Jaume Ciurana, stressed that it is "good news for Barcelona and for Catalonia, which continues to be a very important pole of attraction of investments and initiatives of international reach and impact". He has also celebrated the mission of the center, which will fight the fake news, which he has taken advantage of to relate to the independence process: "The installation of a Facebook center with 500 new jobs in Glòries Tower also tells us that the interested lies about the economic future of Catalonia have proved false at all ".

The leader of the socialist municipal group and former Mayor of the Economy, Jaume Collboni, has also reacted to the news applauding the arrival of the technological giant. "Great news! Barcelona needs to recover confidence and put its innovative capacity to the test. These are key elements to create quality occupation, "he commented from his profile on Twitter. For his part, the president of the PP group, Alberto Fernández, wrote on Twitter: "The arrival of Facebook in Barcelona is very good news, as well as the 500 jobs that it will create." "Despite the 'procés' and Ada Colau, Barcelona has its own DNA that makes it unique. This example should serve as a reference to restore confidence and strengthen the Barcelona brand, "he added.