Facebook has recently admitted that they could have done more to clamp down on fake news being spread on its social network. Recently Google announced that websites found to be publishing fake news would be banned for using its AdSense network, meaning that they’d be cut off from revenue from ads, at least as far as AdSense is concerned.It didn’t take long for Facebook to announce a similar move. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, a Facebook spokesman said that the they will now start to explicitly ban websites that traffic in fake news from its Facebook Audience Network. These websites will fall under the category of misleading, illegal, or deceptive sites, which also once again effectively cuts off any revenue that they might make from ads.
According to the Facebook spokesman, “While implied, we have updated the policy to explicitly clarify that this applies to fake news. We vigorously enforce our policies and take swift action against sites and apps that are found to be in violation. Our team will continue to closely vet all prospective publishers and monitor existing ones to ensure compliance.”
Of course given that there are quite a few different ad platforms out there today, being cut off from AdSense or the Facebook Audience Network isn’t necessarily the end of the world, although admittedly those two are some of the bigger platforms around. Will this affect the number of fake news websites around today? We guess that remains to be seen, but for now we guess it’s a step in the right direction.
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