Facebook has taken several concrete steps to prevent the flow of fake news on the world’s largest social network. The problem turned into a crisis during the U.S. presidential election. Facebook has since taken multiple steps to ensure that its platform is not used by any bad actors to spread false news, state-sponsored or otherwise. To that end, it’s now going to use trust indicators for real news articles.
The trust indicators are meant to promote authentic journalism that’s based on facts. The trust indicator is an icon that users can click to find out more information about the publisher of the article that was posted on Facebook.
These icons will be attached to articles that are shared on the social network. The information they offer include the publishers’ policies on ethics, corrections, and fact-checking. It’s even going to provide information about their ownership structure and their masthead.
These indicators have been developed by the Trust Project. It’s an international consortium of news organizations hosted by the Santa Clara University.
“We believe that helping people access this important contextual information can help them evaluate if articles are from a publisher they trust, and if the story itself is credible,” the company said in a statement.
Facebook is initially going to display these trust indicators for a small group of publishers before expanding the icons to more publishers. That will happen gradually over time.