Mark Zuckerberg has rejected widespread claims that Facebook influenced the US election by allowing fake and incendiary news stories to thrive on the social network.

“The idea that fake news on Facebook, of which it’s a very small amount of the content, influenced the election is a pretty crazy idea,” Zuckerberg said at the Techonomy conference in California on Thursday night.

The social network has been hit by claims during and after the election that its News Feed algorithm and Trending Topics section showed users many hoax news stories or hyper-partisan articles, helping spread misinformation about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.