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Facebook partners with fact-checking firms to begin flagging fake news

Ankita Shah
Ankita Shah
Content writer at Techgenyz

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As we all know Facebook keeps on bringing something new for the users. After knowing that it has problem with false news, therefore, Facebook recently unboxed a new feature that flags certain posts as disputed. However, in some cases the result is not as expected i.e. it has the opposite effect to the one Facebook desired.

According to a report by The Guardian, the tagging of false news is inconsistent, and some stories that have been flagged continue to circulate without a warning. In other cases, traffic to false news posts actually increased after Facebook applied the warning.

Facebook has partnered with different groups of external fact checking sites namely Snopes.com, ABC news, and Politifact. Last month, Facebook revealed its new feature.

If the user continues to share the false news, the false news in the news feeds of the other users is displayed with a note saying “disputed”, and the list of different firms appears that signals it as false news. The reason behind the launch of this new feature is to reduce the visibility of false news on the users screen.

The system includes a light layer of intervention by Facebook employees, who will be tasked with separating personal posts from links that present themselves as news. The employees will not make judgments on the content of the articles, Facebook said. Their job is to check the domain of the posted content to ensure it is not a personal post.

Facebook did not reveal that the number of articles flagged as disputed, or how traffic is affected. But, according to spokesman, the disputed tag does have an effect on false news as it reduces the amount of traffic and shares.

According to sociologists and psychologists, there is one drawback of Facebook’s new feature that it is suitable only if users trust both the social network and the third-party fact-checkers that it has joined hands with.

If a person doubts a specific information source, then the person in opposite will consider as an inaccurate data even though the source provides with facts and evidence in their support.

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