Facebook is finally doing more to combat the wave of fake news that has been plaguing its Newsfeed. That being said, the social media giant still refuses to take responsibility for filtering misleading headlines and has outsourced its fact checking to a third party.
Social media users will soon see additional options for reporting fake news, and there will be a new flagging option alerting people that the story could potentially be a hoax. Stories that end up flagged are then sent for review with third party fact checking organisations that have signed the Poynter’s International Fact Checking Code of Principles.
Essentially, Facebook is asking for help from people who have made it their job to fact check stories. Signatories for the IFCN code of principles include Snopes and the Associated Press, which are both known for pointing out stories will less than legitimate sources.
Facebook will also be limiting the reach of flagged stories by preventing them from being promoted or turned into ads. There will also be changes made to prevent fake stories from spoofing domains in order to appear more legitimate.
These appear to be legitimate steps to improve the conditions of the Newsfeed ever since the company fired its human curators. On the other hand, those humans were found to be clearly biased towards certain stories; which was a whole different problem to begin with.
[Source: Facebook]
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