While satire and fake news aren’t exactly new, the rise of social media means that spreading misinformation around can be a lot quicker and could to complications, especially if people start believing everything they read. Facebook has done things to help combat fake news, such as flagging articles as being disputed.However it seems that Facebook has decided that this isn’t the best way to go about it, and are now changing how fake news articles are being flagged and displayed. According to Facebook, one of the reasons there was an issue with the previous method was that despite flagging articles as being fake or disputed, there were too many steps involved for users to figure out why it was disputed.
They also discovered that sometimes flagging an article as disputed could actually further entrench a person’s belief. So what Facebook is doing now is by showing related articles that have been fact-checked. According to Facebook, “Academic research supports the idea that directly surfacing related stories to correct a post containing misinformation can significantly reduce misperceptions.”
Facebook also stated that they will send a notification to users when an article they’ve shared is disputed. Will this help reduce the number of fake news being posted and shared? Only time will tell, but these changes do sound pretty promising.
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