Facebook will hide the posts of those who share fake news

The announcement via the platform's official blog: news also for pages. Facebook will hide posts from those who share conspiracies and fake news.

"Whether it's false or misleading content about COVID-19 and vaccines, climate change, elections or other topics, we're making sure fewer people see misinformation on our apps." After the long controversy that followed the accusations, made against Facebook, of being too tolerant of misinformation, here's Mark Zuckerberg's shot in the arm.

The turnaround, which has already happened, was officially announced with a post on the platform's official blog. The new guidelines have been developed from the collaboration between Facebook and fact-checkers, or those journalists who, through a series of cross-checks, are able to verify the validity or otherwise of a news story.

What Facebook has decided to do about the news considered unreliable

Part of the action to improve the information ecosystem on the social network will focus on the pages: "We want to give people more information before they appreciate a page that has repeatedly shared content" such as to have been evaluated by fact-checkers, that is, whose validity is in doubt, so it has made necessary that series of cross-checks mentioned above.

"You'll see a pop-up (a pop-up alert, ed.) if you like one of these pages - we read more on the social blog of the blue effe. You can "click" on the alert "to learn more, including whether fact-checkers have claimed that some posts shared" by the page in question "include false information." Facebook will attach to this sort of quality stamp a link through which it will be possible to access the platform's policy on the accuracy and reliability of information.

Why Facebook will partially obscure those who spread misinformation on the social network

The most consistent news, however, concerns users whose behavior on social shows a tendency to share unsubstantiated news. In the face of the spreaders of fake news, Facebook has decided to prepare not only a blackout of the single post evaluated by journalists as unreliable, but also a partial blackout of all content uploaded or shared through the personal profile. In short, it will be less frequent that friends see in the home posts of those who have been labeled as propagators of fake news.

"Starting today, we will reduce the distribution of all posts, in the news feed" coming "from a person's Facebook account", if that person shares with a certain frequency "content that has been evaluated by one of our fact-checking partners". So in the blog of the announcement. The social of Zuckerberg finally specifies that already in the past has been taken the decision to reduce "the scope of a single post in the news feed", if this "has been unmasked". This last point is as valid for Facebook as for Instagram. Even the Stories platform is owned by Zuckerberg.

At the latitudes of Menlo Park, in short, there is no shortage of news: the company has in fact announced a social for neighbors and has introduced a "digital marketplace" accessible directly from the platform.

Giuseppe Giordano