This week, Facebook has begun implementing its new strategy, announced a few months ago, in reducing the amount of “fake news” posted on its platform. In this Quartz article, the writer attempts to publish a fake news article about “Irish Slaves” and is met with a series of warnings that the user has to “click through” in order to post the article.
Here’s a brief rundown: On pasting the link to the article in the “What’s on your mind?” text box, a warning sign pops up with a “Disputed by Snopes and Associated Press” label. Clicking the label produces the tool-tip window shown in the picture below. Attempting to post the article gives you a final ‘are-you-sure?’ (with the same warning) and an option to “post anyway”.
Several questions are raised:
- How is Facebook automatically tagging these articles as fake news? Does the algorithm simply refer to a hand-picked list of ‘known’ fake news websites, or is it somehow more complicated?
- Are users who are more likely to post or share fake news articles likely to be deterred by such warnings?
- Is Facebook sufficiently addressing the issue of “who should decides what’s fake news” by referring to “independent fact-checkers” Snopes.com and Associated Press? (a question that the users in question 2 might be asking)