Instagram Has A New Tool To Fight Against Fake News And Misinformation

Due to the ease of being able to share a post on social media at a click (or several clicks) of a button, it’s not surprising that in our zeal to share information with those around us that sometimes, some of us might accidentally share information that isn’t 100% accurate, or in some cases, flat out fake.

Some have blamed social media platforms for not doing enough to combat this problem, but on Instagram’s front, the company is finally doing something about it. The company has recently announced that they have introduced a new tool that will flag posts that contain false information, as well as prevent users from sharing posts that might also be deemed to be fake.

According to Instagram, “When content has been rated as false or partly false by a third-party fact-checker, we reduce its distribution by removing it from Explore and hashtag pages. In addition, it will be labeled so people can better decide for themselves what to read, trust, and share. When these labels are applied, they will appear to everyone around the world viewing that content – in feed, profile, stories, and direct messages.”

Given that Instagram is pretty much purely image driven, the company says that they will rely on image matching technology to look for images that are the same and have been flagged as fake. It will also work with Facebook, where if content on Facebook has been flagged, it will apply a similar label on Instagram posts as well, and vice versa.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Instagram