Facebook's Reporting Option To Counter Prevalance Of "Fake News"

Facebook is still under the microscope after faux news flooded the social media site in the height of the recent US elections. Investigations pointed to a source outside of the United States, but it managed to penetrate the platform's algorithm and in the process, might have played a role in the outcome of the polls.

While the site's employees acknowledged that fake news ran aplenty during the campaign, CEO Mark Zuckerberg initially countered the claim, saying that "99% of stories" found (and probably read) by users were "highly unlikely" to alter the results of the elections. Since then, his perception towards the issue was transformed from denial to acceptance; he said that Facebook is "taking misinformation very seriously" that would, among others, introduce a more robust detection, third party verification, warnings and "disrupting fake news economics" as a whole.

As a direct result, Facebook has been chasing after fake news like a hound setting its senses on a running rabbit. The latest, according to Engadget is a "false news" option that reports them as such. The option has been in operation for less than a year, was made for people who wanted to see fewer hoaxes in their News Feed. The original link was made by Software Engineer Erich Owens and Research Scientist Udi Weinsberg, and described hoaxes as "News Feed spam": it ranges from scams to what is now regarded as "deliberately false or misleading news stories".

The option comes with a slight fact that only a handful was able to utilize (or know about its existence) its capability. On the other hand, Facebook's Newsroom said that the addition is there for people to report what they don't like. When they decide to click hide, there will also be an option to report the unwanted content and mark them anywhere from being annoying to it containing pornography to a false story altogether. News Feed will then collate the output and will act on the matter where posts who have received "lots of reports will be annotated with a message" that users have reported against their content.