mebeing
Mark Zuckerberg has stated repeatedly that the aim of his social networking website Facebook is to show people the content that is most meaningful and accurate. The company do not by any means favors the hoaxes or fake news on the website and has made many efforts to remove such content from the platform.
During the US election season, fake stories began to circulate more widely on the platform along with follow-up stories debunking the claims. With millions of users using Facebook as a primary source of news coverage, it created a lot of confusion among the users.
Facebook started proceeding very carefully towards the fake news as identifying the truth is very complicated. While exposing the hoaxes, there is a lot of possibility of getting the mainstream sources washed off. But now, Facebook has started flagging the fake news stories in its news feed in the US.
The company has been working with ABC News, Snopes, Politifact, and the Associated press in order to verify stories back in last December. A disputed tag will be visible to the doubtful stories providing a link to a source defying the article’s claim.
This is a good initiative taken by the social media giant but the process seems to be extremely slow. Once a story is reported as fake or considered dubious, users will have to wait for several days before the fake story finally gets assessed by the fact-checking organizations. And even after that, for a story to be marked as fake, two of the parties need to agree for applying the label. And by then, a lot of damage may have already been made.
As Facebook has taken misinformation seriously, we can expect that the company is planning to deal with the endless fake stories by adding other smart features to the platform as well.
