Facebook; A Platform For Fake News?

Lately, Facebook has been tagged by social media users as a fake news source since Facebook hasn't been able to control the boatload of fake news and hoaxes in its News Feed. On Thursday, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg laid bare his plans in fixing the issue.

According to TechCrunch, Facebook has teamed up with some short media organizations including Snopes, Politifact, ABC News, FactCheck.org and AP to combat the vast array of hoaxes and bogus news in its News Feed. The fact-checkers will filter the hoaxes so the fake details will become less visible, would also append warnings from the fact-checkers to fake news in the feed. This  will make the reporting easier as it is going to warp down monetary benefit of the fake news reporters.

'What we are focusing on with this work is specifically the worst of work - clear the hoaxes that were shared intentionally, usually by spammers; for financial gain.' says Facebook's VP of News Feed Adam Mosseri. Facebook will make the fact checkers as a basis in tracking down the most fervid and fake news articles created by the users and algorithms.

In relation to Business Insider, a group of Facebook researchers are going to hunt down website domains that appear to be spoofed to third-party fact-checkers, a Facebook representative stated. There will also be  consequences once proven that a specific site is a maker of hoaxes and fake news. Once Facebook determines a website to be fake will also not be able to sell their adds on the said social network. Hence, owners of determined fake-news sites can produce a thousands of dollars within a month.However, after facing a notable backlash, Zuckerberg now refers Facebook as a 'new kind of platform' which has a responsibility to 'build a space where people can be informed.'