Facebook introduces “Related Articles” to tackle fake news. No more ‘Disputed’ flags.
Facebook has announced that they are changing one of the ways they tackle fake news, by removing the “Disputed” flag and replacing it with a Related Articles feature.
It was only recently that the social networking site introduced the “Disputed” feature that would flag a fake news article as disputed and warn Facebook readers of that fact before they shared it onto their Facebook timelines.
However, according to a post on Facebook’s newsroom blog, that wasn’t working. In fact, Facebook says, doing so only “entrenched deeply held beliefs”.
Academic research on correcting misinformation has shown that putting a strong image, like a red flag, next to an article may actually entrench deeply held beliefs – the opposite effect to what we intended.
So Facebook has announced another route – Related Articles. This feature will show articles related to a link suspected of leading to fake news, in order to provide more context (i.e. actual facts) about a particular story.
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Facebook claims this route is likely to lead to the fake story being shared less as it encourages users to do their own research before choosing to share content on their timelines that may not be accurate.
Related Articles, by contrast, are simply designed to give more context, which our research has shown is a more effective way to help people get to the facts. Indeed, we’ve found that when we show Related Articles next to a false news story, it leads to fewer shares than when the Disputed Flag is shown.
This comes only days after Facebook announced harsher penalties for Facebook pages posting “engagement baiting” posts (i.e. like-farming) that implore readers to share or like them.
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The idea behind the move is that by claiming a story is disputed may seem too judgemental or assertive, and as such can have the opposite effect and “entrench” the beliefs held by the Facebook user sharing a story. However offering more context in the form of related articles may encourage a user to research a story. Something which will lead to fewer shares, Facebook says.
Facebook has said the new feature will be enabled straight away, so expect to see it on your newsfeed soon.
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