Fake news is “killing people’s minds,” Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, has said. The technology entrepreneur said companies like Apple need to create tools that will help to stop the spread of lies, without limiting freedom of speech. Cook also said governments should lead information campaigns to stop fake news. 【小题1】 During these campaigns, supporters of each side used fake news to try to win the election.

“At the moment, unfortunately, some of the people that are winning are the people that try to get the most clicks, not tell the most truth,” said Cook. “It’s killing people’s minds. 【小题2】 We must try to do this without limiting freedom of speech and freedom of the press but we must also help the reader.”

【小题3】 But many people believe Donald Trump’s campaign benefitted more from fake news reports. And the U. S. presidents’ team insisted that a huge crowd attended his inauguration(就职典礼), when the evidence showed only a small audience was there. Trump’s spokesman, Sean Spicer, insisted that the event attracted “the largest audience ever to watch an inauguration” and Trump said he believed the crowd went “all the way back to the Washington Monument.”

Images from the inauguration showed the crowd was quite small and did not get close to the Washington Monument. Senior aide Kellyanne Conwa later described the Trump administration’s lies as “alternative facts.” Hillary Clinton claimed that there was “no evidence” her emails were hacked but the FBI director, James Comey, said it was likely they were hacked.

A study by economists at Stanford University and New York University published two months after November’s U. S. presidential election found that just before the election, fake anti-Clinton stories were shared 30 million times on Facebook and pro-Clinton stories were shared eight million times. It said: The average American saw and remembered 0.92 pro-Trump fake news stories and 0.23 pro-Clinton fake news stories. 【小题4】