Facebook is finally taking measures to curb spreading of fake news with help of new tools. The social network has added options for readers and third-party fact checkers to flag articles.
Now if you see a hoax on Facebook you can report it by clicking the upper right hand corner of a post. Also articles deemed false by Facebook’s partner, Poynter Institute’s International Fact Checking Network, will have a new tag attached that reads “Disputed by 3rd Party Fact-Checkers.”Users will be able to click on a “learn why this is disputed” link to get more information. Stories that have been disputed may also appear lower in News Feed. You can share these stories, but you will see a warning that the story has been disputed as you share. Also, once a story is flagged, it can’t be made into an ad and promoted.
Adam Mosseri, VP, News Feed wrote in a blog post,
We’re always looking to improve News Feed by listening to what the community is telling us. We’ve found that if reading an article makes people significantly less likely to share it, that may be a sign that a story has misled people in some way. We’re going to test incorporating this signal into ranking, specifically for articles that are outliers, where people who read the article are significantly less likely to share it.
The move comes from Facebook following rising criticism that it did not do enough to combat the problem during the U.S. presidential campaign. Currently, all the new tools will be available for a small percentage of its users in the United States.