Facebook is taking action against fake news stories.
The social media giant has unveiled a string of measures to help flag fake stories that appear in people鈥檚 news feeds. The move follows an onslaught of criticism directed at Facebook over concerns it was not doing enough to stop the spread of false reports on its platform.
Facebook says that users will soon be able to flag when they believe a story is a hoax. The story may then be sent to 鈥渢hird-party fact checking organisations鈥� for review.
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If these groups share concerns about the piece鈥檚 validity, an alert will appear underneath the post warning that its accuracy is disputed.
False stories could also be bumped further down news feeds and it won鈥檛 be possible to make them into an advert or promote them on the site. But users will still be able to share them with their friends.
鈥淲e believe in giving people a voice and that we cannot become arbiters of truth ourselves, so we鈥檙e approaching this problem carefully,鈥� says Adam Mosseri, vice president of Facebook鈥檚 news feed. 鈥淲e鈥檝e focused our efforts on the worst of the worst, on the clear hoaxes spread by spammers for their own gain, and on engaging both our community and third party organisations.鈥�
Bogus stories
A row erupted over Facebook鈥檚 role in tackling the problem of fake news following Donald Trump鈥檚 US election win, with critics pointing to scores of fictitious but widely shared articles smearing his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Founder Mark Zuckerberg initially rubbished the claims, saying it was a 鈥減retty crazy idea鈥� that fake news could have influenced the election.
Mosseri says the rise of bogus stories can be blamed in part on financial motivation, as spammers can profit from advert revenues by luring social media users in with scandalous headlines.
鈥淚t鈥檚 important to us that the stories you see on Facebook are authentic and meaningful,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e excited about this progress, but we know there鈥檚 more to be done. We鈥檙e going to keep working on this problem for as long as it takes to get it right.鈥�
