Here's What Facebook Is Doing To Quash Fake News
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MIAMI (CBSMiami) -- Amid concerns of fake news circulating Facebook, its founder, Mark Zuckerberg took to his platform to spread the word on how to fight it.
Over the weekend, Zuckerberg laid out steps for users to do their part in quashing the fake information and what the company is doing in turn.
First thing's first, he cleared up their stance on the issue.
"The bottom line is: we take misinformation seriously. Our goal is to connect people with the stories they find most meaningful, and we know people want accurate information," wrote Zuckerberg.
He called the issue "complex " since they do not want to infringe on their users' right to have a voice on social media.
"We need to be careful not to discourage sharing of opinions or to mistakenly restrict accurate content. We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties," wrote Zuckerberg.
While he says the percentage on misinformation on Facebook is small, they are working on various ways to avoid it from spreading with the help of their users and other parties including:
Stronger Detection - They're improving their ability to classify misinformation including using systems that will detect what someone may flag as false before they even do it.
Easy Reporting- Making it easier for users to report stories as fake.
Third Party Verification- Having fact checking organizations step in.
Warnings- They are exploring the possibilities of labeling stories that have been flagged as false.
Related Articles Quality - They are raising the bar when it comes to what shows up as a related news story on users' news feeds.
Disrupting Fake News Economics - They're looking to changing their ad policies to disrupt the spread of misinformation driven by "financially motivated spam."
Listening - They want to work closer with journalists and others in the news industry to learn from them and get their input.
Zuckerberg finished off on a realistic note and with a promise,
"Some of these ideas will work well, and some will not. But I want you to know that we have always taken this seriously, we understand how important the issue is for our community and we are committed to getting this right," he wrote.