Are You Suspicious of Fake News on Facebook? Use the New Context Button
Facebook has a problem with fake news . His latest oversight in trending news helped spread misinformation from 4chan’s anonymous bulletin board about the Las Vegas shooting . To combat the spread of fake news (and growing backlash against the company), the social network is testing a new feature that allows users to distinguish an article from a trusted publisher from an article that is a little more suspicious than usual. by clicking the “Additional Information” button.
The company’s new contextual information button adds relevant information to any related article published in your news feed, such as publisher information (such as a Wikipedia page), additional related articles, and how the article is posted to Facebook. If an article lacks contextual information, such as a Wikipedia page, or lacks links to similar stories from other publishers, Facebook will alert users of the missing contextual information. According to Facebook, the new tool is designed to help users “make informed decisions about which stories to read, share and trust.” Having fake news spread by Facebook itself has become increasingly problematic after Facebook disbanded its human-driven trending team .
However, Facebook’s previous efforts to expose fake news to users – in the form of the “controversial” tag in the article in question – had little impact on the habits of young Facebook users. We’ve reached out to Facebook to ask if this new fake news identification tool will be more effective than its previous efforts and will update the story accordingly.