Facebook’s ‘Fake News’ Initiative

This article was originally published on FactCheck.org. 

In a radio interview with WHYY’s NewsWorks in Philadelphia, FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely talks about the recent announcement that FactCheck.org will work with Facebook to combat fake news on the popular social media site.

In response to an increase in the circulation of fake news on its site, Facebook enlisted five fact-checking organizations to review stories that are flagged by Facebook users as potentially fake. The other fact-checking organizations working with Facebook are PolitiFact, ABC News, the Associated Press and Snopes.com.

“We’ll use the reports from our community, along with other signals, to send stories to these organizations,” Facebook said in its announcement. “If the fact checking organizations identify a story as fake, it will get flagged as disputed and there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why. Stories that have been disputed may also appear lower in News Feed.”

FactCheck.org has been writing about false viral claims since 2007, when we started Ask FactCheck. In Ask FactCheck, we answer readers’ questions — many of which deal with fake news stories on the internet and bogus claims in chain emails.

In our first Ask FactCheck as part of the Facebook initiative, we wrote about a fake news story from Newslo, which claims to be “the first hybrid News/Satire platform on the web.” The Newslo story includes a fabricated quote from Vice President-elect Mike Pence about First Lady Michelle Obama.

Read more http://www.factcheck.org/2016/12/facebooks-fake-news-initiative/