Facebook to Provide Easier Reporting, Better Evaluation of Fake News Stories, Spammers

Faced with a barrage of criticism about proliferating fake news, Facebook will focus efforts "on the worst of the worst, on the clear hoaxes spread by spammers for their own gain, and on engaging both our community and third party organizations," wrote Vice President-News Feed Adam Mosseri in a Thursday blog post (see 1611210002). The company is testing ways to make it easier for users to report a potentially fake story or hoax by clicking the upper right hand corner of a post, he wrote. Facebook also started a program to work with third-party fact-checking organizations that signed onto Poynter's international fact-checking code of principles. There are 43 international signatories, including ABC News, PolitiFact and Snopes, to Poynter's code. "We’ll use the reports from our community, along with other signals, to send stories to these organizations," wrote Mosseri. "If the fact checking organizations identify a story as fake, it will get flagged as disputed and there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why." These stories may not be removed from Facebook's news section but would appear lower in the feed with a warning that they are disputed, he said, and the stories won't be promoted. The company said it's reducing financial incentives for spammers that masquerade as real publications by eliminating the ability to spoof domains, and will analyze publisher sites to see where enforcement may be necessary.