Facebook is taking strict action against those people who use their accounts to post false news in a bid to garner more attention and views. The social networking site has been blamed previously for helping such fake posts to be popularized and in turn create misinformation among people who follow these false stories. Facebook announced that it would prevent all such channels which repeatedly post Fake News from buying advertisements and making money through its medium.
What is Facebook trying to do?
The company wants to ensure that its medium is not used to propagate false news and spread misinformation among people.
Facebook has been working with AP and Snopes to determine to figure out which of the news are false and to flag them as such. However, now the company will also severely restrict these false news sharing pages from making money.
The company explained that inaccurate stories and posts are those which are blatant lies or hoaxes. It does not, however, include those posts that are disputed for reasons of opinion or partisanship. Links that are disputed can no longer be promoted through Facebook ads. However, on Monday, August 28, Facebook revealed that Pages that are known to share fake news will now not be able to buy ads on Facebook, regardless of whether the link in the ad belongs to a disputed news or not.
Product Director Robert Leathern explained how Facebook has been trying to fight back against such pages and posts which share fake new with others in the media. He believes that there are three essential ways in which such activities can be stopped. The first method would be to end the economic gain that false news sharing has provided to people.
Secondly, it is vital to slow down the speed at which such false news spreads. Finally, Facebook is also working to make people more informed so that they are aware when they see a false story.
Why ad-blocking is an important change in cutting down false news
When Facebook deems that a Page is a repeat offender and has shared disputed news multiple times, the company will block that Page from buying ads on the media.
This will severely restrict the amount of money that Page creators can make by posting false news. This false news is also used to lure in the readers who are unaware that the Page they are visiting is lying to them.
Facebook did not specify how many disputed stories has to be shared through a single Page for it to be blocked. Leathern also notes that a ban is not necessarily permanent, meaning that any Page which gets blocked for sharing disputed news needs to stop sharing such stories to get back its advertisement privileges. It remains to be seen whether this can help decrease the false news on Facebook.
