Facebook Rolls Out New Plan To Combat Fake News
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Facebook has introduced a series of experiments to keep fake news from being disseminated on its network.
The social network is teaming up with a Philadelphia based fact checking organization.
After months of public debate, Facebook has unveiled a plan to fight fake news. It's partnering with five media sites including Penn based factcheck.org.
Director Eugene Kiely calls the plan a good first step.
"They're not any censoring material, they're not taking anything down. We will be able to see these suspect stories that are trending on Facebook and we can then send Facebook URLs to the stories where we debunk these fake stories."
If fact-checkers agree the story is misleading, Facebook will publicly flag the story as "disputed" and it will be downgraded in the news feed. Users can still click on the link and share it, but will receive another warning.
Kiely says there's more to be done.
"That's just dealing first of all with stories, it doesn't deal with images. We see a lot of that and it needs to be addressed as well, but that's not going to be part of this. There's also videos posted to YouTube."
Facebook users now have the option to flag a post as "fake news" and message the the friend who originally shared the the story. Plus, "disputed" articles will no longer be eligible for Facebook ads.
