Facebook Takes Action to Curb Fake News on Social Media Facebook tackles fake news on its platform

Facebook recently announced through their Production Manager, Tessa Lyons that Facebook has put in place new measures to curb and ultimately stop the spread of fake news. Fake news has proven to be a major problem in 2017 and in 2018 it is still affecting us greatly. In India, at least 7 people were lynched and killed due to the spreading of fake news around the country concerning a fake kidnapping video.

Several African countries have also taken measures to protect their citizens against the spread of fake news and cybercrime. Now Facebook is picking up the baton to ensure the safety of their users to manage and moderate the content on the platform. With more than 1 billion pieces of content posted on the platform daily, reviews cannot be made one by one. The social media company has taken to artificial intelligence to solve the problem by identifying duplicated stories to debunk them.

Machine learning will help them to identify and demote foreign pages used for financially motivated spreading of fake news. Previously Facebook used rating to fact check such pages and reduce their ability to monetize their campaigns. However, there is a need to do more. Tessa Lyons spoke to BuzzFeed and said that fact checking will also be expanded to viral photos and images. The fact-checking will also be spread to 14 countries and teams would be put in place to detect suspicious activity. Action will also be taken against repeat offenders.

According to Facebook, getting flagged will not automatically lead to a ban.
Lyons said the offenders will be given a chance to ‘rehabilitate’ their pages. They will receive a warning and demonetization action taken against them. More so, Facebook is going to partner with academics to improve transparency. The AI technology will be subject to reviewing an enormous amount of content to detect suspicious activity on suspicious accounts including terrorism, child pornography, fake news or hate speech.

The technology should also be able to detect common patterns in page admins from the same country, copy and pasting of the same content and low-quality ads. These kinds of characteristics qualify the account as having suspicious activity. Facebook has recently received backlash for rejecting a news story ad on child detention for having ‘political’ content. Although the move to curb fake news is welcome, only time will tell if it is indeed effective.
Source: Techweez.com & Gizmodo