In a way to end the invasion of fake news on its platform, Facebook has announced today that it will release a new feature to fight misinformation.
In a statement released this morning, Facebook wrote:
“We believe in giving people a voice and that we cannot become arbiters of truth ourselves, so we’re approaching this problem carefully. We’ve 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 organizations.”
Therefore, users will be able to flag any post as being “fake news”. Then, Facebook will unite forces with fact-checking websites like The Associated Press and Snopes to verify the authenticity of stories. Flagged posts will appear lower in people’s news feed in a way to limit the propagation of the misinformation.
This new feature should calm the people accusing Facebook of doing nothing to prevent those fake news from manipulating the public opinion.
Facebook as the #1 source of information
Social networks are becoming more and more the places of choice from where people are getting their information.
In a report from the Pew Research Center in May, a staggering 44% of US adults responded that they now go on Facebook to get their daily news update. The contenders each gets a piece of the pie too: YouTube (10%), Twitter (9%), Instagram (4%) and LinkedIn (4%).
Many people think that this growth in popularity comes with a social responsibility for Facebook.
Let’s hope that users will do their best in using this new feature so that we all have a cleaner and more truthful newsfeed.
In related news, Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president for U.S. public policy, met with President-elect Trump at his Manhattan tower. The details of the meeting were not disclosed.