Mark Zuckerberg Announces Facebook’s Plan to Attack Fake News

Facebook’s main approach to problems has been to tackle them with studying its vast troves of user data, with algorithms that can be more effective at things than humans, and to favor engineers over editors. The Pew survey found that 15 percent of Americans are not very confident or totally unconfident in their ability to recognize fake news on the internet. Once a website has been labeled as a fake news organization, they will no longer be allowed to sell ads on the platform.

Facebook on Thursday unveiled new ways it’s cracking down on fake news, following a nationwide backlash against made-up reports that flooded the social networking site during the election cycle. The Infowars story predicted that Facebook would probably “use the new feature to blacklist information that runs contrary to any mainstream media narratives”.

If the journalists think the story is bogus, Facebook will flag the story as “disputed by third-party fact-checkers”.

The fact-checking organizations will not be paid to provide this service.

“While we don’t write the news stories you read and share, we also recognise we’re more than just a distributor of news”.

Facebook has struggled for months over whether it should crack down on false stories and hoaxes being spread on its site.

Stories that flunk the fact check won’t be removed from Facebook.

All of these efforts, Mosseri said, are works in progress.

Facebook also said it was looking into penalising websites which tried to mimic major publishers, or misled readers into thinking they were a well-known news source. Almost two-thirds of respondents said they believe fake news has left Americans confused about basic facts. IFCN Code of Principles signatories in the United States will review the flagged stories for accuracy.

Zuckerberg responded by assuring him that his “express aim is to eliminate only patently false news stories from Facebook”, according to Bozell. The stories will still be shareable, but a user trying to share one of these hoaxes will be greeted with a pop-up warning that the story’s accuracy has been called into question. Outlets in the network include Snopes, ABC News, and The Associated Press. IFCN Director Alexios Mantzarlis said his organization has done a “desk review” of each before establishing “a more formal vetting mechanism behind the code of principles”.

Stories deemed to be false will now be “flagged” by Facebook, with an accompanying red label claiming the story is “disputed by 3rd Party Fact-Checkers”. And if people decide they want to share the story with friends anyway, they can – but they’ll get another warning.

Facebook has announced it will empower Snopes, an organization with a clear left-wing bias, to bury so-called “fake news” on its news feed, a move that clearly opens the door for the outright censorship of conservative content and opinion.

Zuckerberg, echoing other Facebook officials, said “this is an early test”, and he said “I’m going to keep a close eye on it”. “Due to our limited staff, we won’t be adding new signatories until the new process is concluded in the coming weeks”, Poynter wrote.