Fake News Stories On Your Timeline? Facebook Introduces Features To Tackle Them.

If you have been on any social media platform recently, there is one story about the Chennai cyclone, Vardah that might have caught your attention. The story, in the form of a “warning”, claimed that a NASA report had predicted that Chennai might get submerged as a result of the cyclone. The message went viral and caused some panic. The message also happens to be completely fake.

Now, thanks to some new tools introduced by Facebook, you will be able to report any such false stories you see on your timeline.

While Facebook primarily developed the new features because of the numerous fabricated stories that were shared during the US elections, they can help countries worldwide tackle the issue.

Photo source: Facebook

Adam Mosseri, VP, News Feed, Facebook, addressed the issue in an official blog-post for Facebook saying that this move has been established to give people “a voice”.

“We’re testing several ways to make it easier to report a hoax if you see one on Facebook, which you can do by clicking the upper right hand corner of a post. We’ve relied heavily on our community for help on this issue, and this can help us detect more fake news,” he says.

The platform has also introduced a new label called “Disputed stories” through which the stories would be fact-checked by third party organisations. So far there are 43 signatories from different countries and Factchecker.in is the signatory from India.

“It will still be possible to share these stories, but you will see a warning that the story has been disputed as you share.”

Photo source: Facebook

Facebook might even penalise websites that create and benefit from creating fake news stories.  So, next time you see a news story in your timeline that you suspect is fake, you know what to do.

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