Facebook starts deploying new tools to combat “fake news”

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:

  1. 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?
  2. Are users who are more likely to post or share fake news articles likely to be deterred by such warnings?
  3. 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)