As the media community tries to figure out how Donald Trump won the presidential election despite the widespread conviction that Hillary Clinton would dominate the polls, one of the theories that has been circulating is that fake Facebook news played a large part in influencing America’s vote. While Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has denied these claims, saying that Americans are more likely to vote based on experience than media exposure, it is hard to deny that social media and fake news did not influence the general public in some ways.

But America is not the only country that is influenced by fake Facebook news. In an article published by the New York Times, journalists Paul Mozur and Mark Scott discuss how countries around the world, including (but not limited to) Germany, the Philippines, and Indonesia, fake news has become a widespread issue. Richard Heydarian, a political analyst in the Philippines, criticized Facebook for reacting too slowly to curb the dissemination of fake news sources. In this specific case, protecting the citizens from faux Facebook news becomes especially important because the Philippines are one example of a country that receives most of its news from Facebook and Facebook alone. World leaders including Angela Merkel and Barack Obama have requested that the company find a means to protect users from misinformation in some way. One suggestion from Merkel was to publish the algorithm that ranks news stories so that there is more transparency within the company.