Facebook, Twitter Join Network to Tackle Fake News

“The network will help Facebook showcase the products, tools and services we have built for journalists but also ensure we are constantly learning about how to improve them based on feedback from newsrooms”, she said.

Facebook, Twitter and news organisations – including AFP, CNN, The New York Times, Washington Post and BuzzFeed News – have joined a coalition of media and technology groups seeking to filter out online misinformation and improve news quality on social networks.

Áine Kerr, Facebook’s journalism partnerships manager, said the network would help it support reporters in using Facebook to find and distribute news more effectively.

The partner network is created to help news organisations work with the tech companies to improve newsgathering, and make verification of information from social media more effective and easier to access.

Fortune opines that since Facebook is the world’s most dominant social media network with approximately 1.7 billion monthly users, greater than the population of China, it has a responsibility to take on the fake stories that might lead to fraud or misinformation.

In a blog post, Jenni Sargent, managing director of the coalition, wrote that there is a thriving community of specialists who have honed and developed social news gathering and verification skills. The First Draft Coalition’s partner network, which includes outlets such as the New York Times and CNN, is meant to train journalists in how to use the web to find and report news. “We want to ensure we are building opportunities to learn from the industry and to ensure we continually hear their questions and feedback”.

The group announced a number of initiatives, such as creating a voluntary code of practice, promoting news literacy among social media users, and launching a platform in October that will allow members to verify questionable news stories. The micro-blogging site said it can collaboratively shape ethical guidelines, best practices and tools when it comes to finding and verifying eyewitness media.

Unsurprisingly, those “news sources”, on which Google, Facebook and Twitter are relying on to filter out supposedly dishonest or untrustworthy news content, are nearly exclusively left-leaning.

The social networks will be included at First Draft summit meetings with all of the partners.

As a result, social networks, journalists, human rights activists, and academics are teaming up with the First Draft Coalition (FDC) to curb the chicanery and develop new initiatives.