One of the most hotly contested issues after the U.S. election was the preponderance of so-called ‘fake news’ on Facebook. Liberal stung by the loss of Hillary Clinton blamed her loss – in part – on fake news disseminated within the Facebook ‘filter bubble’. You know, the kind of stories that are like THE POPE ENDORSES DONALD TRUMP (he didn’t) or HILLARY CLINTON DEATHLY ILL WITH AIDS (she wasn’t).
In the end, it was a bit of a pointless partisan slapfight. Liberals have their own fake and exaggerated news, and when the Washington Post published a list of ‘fake news outlets’ they argued was full of Kremlin propaganda, it featured a number of sites which – while outside the political mainstream – certainly should not be considered ‘fake’ or ‘hoax’ news.
Similarly, Trump supporters picked up on the phrase ‘fake news’ and began to use it to describe news outlets they saw as critical of Donald during the campaign – CNN, MSNBC, Media Matters and so on. So that plan backfired for everyone.
But it’s still a lingering issue for Facebook, who like to claim they’re not a media company and therefore only barely liable for what gets published on their site. It’s been a massive PR problem for them, and today, they’ve announced a suite of new measures to fight hoax or fake news.
Not only are they making reporting easier, but they’re working with third-party fact checkers in conjunction with user reports to flag certain stories as ‘disputed’. Once a story is flagged as ‘disputed’, it’ll appear much lower in the News Feed – if at all – and users will get a warning message if they try to share it.
They’re also making it much harder for known fake news sites to get a foothold in the News Feed, and banning them from advertising or sponsoring posts.
We’ll see how this goes. It opens up a whole ledger of new concerns – should Facebook be the ones making these kind of decisions? How transparent will this process be? What kind of process of appeals do you have if your site is wrongly reported? These are all worth asking.
Source: Facebook.
Photo: Getty Images.
