Their employees certainly think it is.
The reason Google/Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc. are so obsessed with fake news at the moment is because their employees believe that their product, which was supposed to "change the world for the better!" inadvertently helped Trump be elected. I'm sure more than a few Valley employees have had nervous breakdowns over this.
Now, banning Trump from Facebook or Twitter would be a little bit too obvious, so they're doing the next best thing: making sure, under the guise of "keeping you safe from fake news", that Trump or Trump 2.0 can't leverage their offerings to help his cause.
I see the only effective fight against fake news, biased news, sensational news, or whatever you want to call it is education. And I lumped all those different types of news together not because I believe they are the same or even believed true by the same group of people. I grouped them together because each of them poses a threat to our country and each can be treated by effective education.
Many people who know content is filtered by an institution will discredit any info coming from that institution (and for possibly good reasons). To get people to generate trust in our institutions and their reported info, they need to be the one to make the conscious choice to consume or not consume that info. Coddling the info before it gets to people doesn’t create an empowered or educated society.
Ah, but who will fix "fake education"?
Obviously both of them already do some content filtering for illegal content etc. but where do we draw the line? Personally I think it's unfair to be blaming them, considering they never claimed to filter this type of content. Also, if it is decided that they should be responsible, how do you determine what is and isn't fake? Seems like a dangerous thing to be in charge of.
edit: since it took me so long to finish typing this, everyone is now asking similar questions. whatever