Facebook is dropping the "disputed" flags on fake news stories and will instead provide links to more reputable content in its related articles section.
Critics said the red "disputed" flags were actually reinforcing beliefs held by viewers because it draws their attention to the disputed article, TechCrunch reported. Related articles, on the other hand, give context and help people get more facts about the topic and generate fewer shares of the disputed article, according to Facebook testing.
Facebook’s process for flagging inaccurate content had previously taken three days and did not address articles that were only partially false or unproven.
One advantage to using related articles is that they only require one fact checker rather than the two that were required for the disputed flags, The Verge reported. This will speed up the process of identifying possible fake news articles.
Facebook said most of the fake news stories on the platform are aimed at getting users to click through to a website with the goal of getting ad revenue for the site. By demoting posts that it considers fake news, it cuts the traffic to that website by about 80 percent and forces spammers and trolls to reconsider posting them in the first place, a Facebook blog post pointed out.
Facebook said it may also remove advertising rights from repeat offenders, and that it would start a new initiative to study how users decide what is fake news based on the news source.
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