Facebook Has A Tool Which Tracks Fake News About Itself

Facebook has taken some considerable steps to prevent fake news from spreading on its platform which happens to be the world’s largest social media network. The company has reportedly also built a tool to track fake news about itself and its products. The program is called Stormchaser and it’s used to catch and debunk misinformation about Facebook.

Bloomberg reports that Stormchaser is used by Facebook to track and refute fake news about the company. This includes rumors spread on WhatsApp, which does have a slight rumor spreading problem which the company has had to tackle as well.

Stormtracker was reportedly developed in 2016 and has been used to follow viral posts about Facebook. It has picked up rumors like Facebook listening in on users to harmless pranks which trick users into copying/pasting a status if they don’t want their account to be locked down.

“We didn’t use this internal tool to fight false news because that wasn’t what it was built for, and it wouldn’t have worked,” a spokesperson for the company told Bloomberg, adding that this tool was built with simple technology so that it can help detect posts about Facebook based on keywords. The information then helps Facebook decide whether it should respond to any product confusion on its platform.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Web
Tags: Facebook, fake news