Facebook wages war on fake news by providing perspective
Facebook is one of the biggest social media platforms out there and it often unwittingly ends up hosting news that has no credibility or even an ounce of truth in them. To counter the spread of 'fake news", it's now rolling out "Related Articles", which would appear below the news links posted by the users on the platform, to offer perspectives. Here's more.
What is it all about?
Related Articles below the news links will appear if some "viral" news or some news, that's been externally fact checked by Facebook's partners and found to be false, get shared on the platform. This would give the users additional reporting on the same topic to have a well-rounded opinion or for them to know if it's false.
Why is it important?
Facebook feels that if users get to see contradictory angles of a story in Related Articles, they might give it a pass or they might be less likely to believe the original reportage, which they intended to share and skip it, as it'd now look dubious. This would minimize the spread of false news and save Facebook the trouble of acting as honesty police.
What it can also prevent
There is another benefit of introducing Related Articles. When a user gets to come across several angles of a controversial topic, he/she gets to form an opinion, rather than getting influenced by a one-sided diatribe. Currently, it's being introduced in the US, Germany, France, and Netherlands, as Facebook has fact checking partnerships in these locations. Eventually, it will be rolled out to other countries.
Not an arbiter of truth
Facebook News Feed integrity product manager Tessa Lyons said that the social media giant has no intentions of becoming the "arbiters of the truth". All it wants to do is get false news detected by its algorithm, reviewed by the fact checkers. If the time gets shortened for this process, fewer people will get exposed to fake news, capable of spreading panic among users.
