Facebook has introduced a new feature to control Fake News

"Facebook" has introduced a new feature to control Fake News

If you’re one of the users Facebook has decided to participate in the test, you’ll see this small button in the upper right-hand corner above an article’s title.


If you tap this button, you’ll be able to find extra contextual data about the journalist that is “pulled from across Facebook and other experts, such as information from the publisher’s Wikipedia entry, a key to follow their Page, trending articles, or similar articles about the topic, and data about how the article is meaning shared by people on Facebook.”

As Facebook product director Sara Su told News, “People have shown us that they want more information regarding of what they’re reading. They want genuine tools to help them understand if an article is from a journalist they trust and evaluate if the story itself is credible.” And this is Facebook’s answer.

The point is the latest tool to appear from the Facebook Journalism Project, which has been fighting the spread of faulty data for many months, particularly about elections. But even if there isn’t an option around the corner, giving folks path to “important contextual information can help them evaluate if articles are from a journalist they trust, and if the story itself is credible.”

 The social network noted that the test is just in its beginning stages and that user and administrator feedback will be taken into concern moving forward.

In a blog post reporting, Facebook noted that most interest Pages will not see “any significant changes to their distribution in News Feed as a result of this test.” That said, Pages are approved to use publishing best practices and post stories that will resonate with users and are, of course, not fake news.