Peddlers of fake news to be punished by Facebook
People sharing false or misleading information on Facebook could soon be penalised.
The social media giant has announced it will be cracking down on fake news by doling out harsher punishments for individual accounts repeatedly sharing misinformation.
Under the new rules, Facebook will “reduce the distribution of all posts” from people guilty of doing this to make it harder for their content to be seen by other users.
Though this already happens for Pages and Groups that post misinformation, it hasn’t extended that to individuals until now.
Facebook does limit the reach of posts made by individual users that have been flagged by fact-checkers, but the new policy will act as a broader penalty for account holders sharing misinformation.
But, Facebook has not specified how many times a user’s posts will have to be flagged before they are punished.
The company will also start showing users pop-messages if they click the “like” button of a page that frequently shares misinformation to alert users that fact-checkers have previously flagged posts from the page.
“This will help people make an informed decision about whether they want to follow the Page,” the company wrote on a blog post.
The rules are the company’s latest effort to curb fake news. This comes after Facebook has continued to struggle with controlling the rumours and misleading posts from nearly 3 billion users, despite creating dedicated information hubs for topics such as the pandemic and climate change to present users with reliable information.