Facebook to red-flag fake news with help of its users and third-party fact-checkers

Facebook will begin flagging fake news stories, the company announced on Thursday, responding to a torrent of criticism of its promotion of fake news during the US election.

Readers will be able to alert Facebook to possible fake news stories, which the social media behemoth will then send to outside fact-checking organisations. If those organisations identify the article as fake, then the link will appear on Facebook with an alert noting: “Disputed by 3rd party fact-checkers.”

Disputed stories also may appear lower in the newsfeed, said Facebook.

“It’s important to us that the stories you see on Facebook are authentic and meaningful,” reads the Facebook press release.

Another change being rolled out identifies stories that are being shared more by people who have only read the headline than by people who have actually clicked on them and read the text. “We’ve found that if reading an article makes people significantly less likely to share it, that may be a sign that a story has misled people in some way,” the company said.

Facebook is also attempting to reduce the financial incentives to create fake news websites, by making it harder to spoof existing legitimate domains.