Facebook has taken some major steps to stop the flow of fake news on its platform in the wake of foreign meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. It’s working with dozens of partners to fact-check news stories already and the social network has now revealed that its fact-checking partners have been given access to a new tool which will enable them to fact-check photos and videos that may have been used for propaganda.
This machine learning-powered feature will enable reviewers to identify photos and videos that are fake and take the relevant action accordingly so that the fake content doesn’t spread on the network.
The technology proactively flags posts with media that might be false using different signals that also includes feedback from users. Once the system flags a post with such media, it’s checked by third-party fact checkers to see if the content is real or not.
One such example is of a doctored image of a presidential candidate in Mexico’s elections this year, Ricardo Amaya, which suggested that he had a U.S. green card. That picture was flagged by Facebook’s systems and later verified as false by third-party fact checkers.
Facebook has vowed to continue investing in technology such as this to ensure that it can prevent fake news from spreading on its platform which reaches countless people across the globe.
Filed in . Read more about Facebook and Fake News. Source: newsroom.fb