Facebook is hoping that fake news gets buried beneath more real information
- Thursday, August 3rd, 2017
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Facebook is stepping up its fight against fake news by rolling out the update to its Related Articles more broadly.
The social network began testing a feature back in April that meant users were prompted with related articles before they had read an article. These additional articles appeared below stories related to topics that many people are talking about. This meant easy access to alternate perspectives and information, including third-party fact checkers.
Facebook has now decided it’s time to roll out this feature more broadly. Part of this rollout will see Facebook using updated machine learning to detect more potential fake news to send to fact checkers. Facebook says this may result in the fact checking stories appearing below the original post, once they have been reviewed. Despite stepping up its fight, the work is far from done for Facebook and its well-aware of that.
“In addition to seeing which stories are disputed by third-party fact checkers, people want more context to make informed decisions about what they read and share,” said Sara Su, product manager for News Feed at Facebook, in an updated post. “We will continue testing updates to Related Articles and other ongoing News Feed efforts to show less false news on Facebook and provide people context if they see false news.”