Facebook (ticker: FB) says it is partnering with five third-party fact-checking organizations as part of its plans to address fake news on its platform — and users can help with the effort, too.
The announcement is part of Facebook’s latest efforts to stop fake news, include easier reporting, flagging stories as disputed, informed sharing and disrupting financial incentives for spammers.
The company is working with Snopes, FactCheck.org, the Associated Press, Politifact and ABC News, according to a Facebook spokesman. Facebook will send stories to them, and if they find that they are fake, it will receive a “disputed” flag including a link that explains the reasoning behind it. Though a warning will appear beforehand, users will still be able to share these stories.
“AP has long done some of the most thorough fact-checking in the news business,” Sally Buzbee, AP’s incoming executive editor, said in a news release. “This initiative is a natural extension of that tradition, and of the AP’s long-standing role setting the standards for accuracy and ethics in journalism.”
Facebook users will also play a role. Facebook says it is testing ways where users can report hoaxes and fake news by clicking on the upper right hand corner of a post, and ranking posts accordingly if people who read it “are significantly less likely to share it,” according to a Facebook news release.
Facebook has reiterated on multiple occasions that it’s not a media company, has been criticized heavily for the surplus of fake news on its platform.
The fake news problem, if not addressed, could be a long-term problem for Facebook stock. The issue creates a lot of negative publicity for Facebook, and the company’s stock has fallen more steeply than the broader tech industry, which has seen a dip since Election Day.
MarketWatch says its dip in shares was seemingly more related to other factors, such as an increase in spending, revenue deceleration and its video and instant article metrics overstatement.
Facebook is additionally addressing spammers that make money pretending to be news organizations by getting rid of the chance for people to spoof domains, in addition to examining publisher sites and taking policy enforcement actions if need be.
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Facebook Inc (FB) Will Warn When News May Be Fake originally appeared on usnews.com
