Facebook announces plans to censor and label news
- 7 years ago
MENLO PARK, CALIFORNIA — Social media company Facebook this week announced plans to to label and censor news stories “third party fact-checkers” deem to be fake.
According to a Facebook blog post, the company is testing a feature that allows users to report and flag stories they believe to be false. Once flagged, the story is removed from the user’s newsfeed. Furthermore, potentially fake stories will be labelled as being “disputed by third party fact checkers” in users’ Facebook newsfeeds.
The “third party fact checkers” include left-leaning news organizations like Snopes and ABC and other outlets from other countries. They reportedly adhere to a fact-checking “code of principles” provided by non-profit journalism school, the Poynter Institute.
Another addition will be how Facebook ranks news. The company believes if articles are read on the newsfeed, but not shared, then there’s a chance the content could be misleading. Put simply, if you read an article from your Facebook newsfeed and don’t pass it along, then the algorithm might flag it for being misleading content.
According to a Facebook blog post, the company is testing a feature that allows users to report and flag stories they believe to be false. Once flagged, the story is removed from the user’s newsfeed. Furthermore, potentially fake stories will be labelled as being “disputed by third party fact checkers” in users’ Facebook newsfeeds.
The “third party fact checkers” include left-leaning news organizations like Snopes and ABC and other outlets from other countries. They reportedly adhere to a fact-checking “code of principles” provided by non-profit journalism school, the Poynter Institute.
Another addition will be how Facebook ranks news. The company believes if articles are read on the newsfeed, but not shared, then there’s a chance the content could be misleading. Put simply, if you read an article from your Facebook newsfeed and don’t pass it along, then the algorithm might flag it for being misleading content.