Facebook To Solve ‘Fake News’ Issues; Filtering Test To Be Conducted In Germany

by Kerillian / Jan 16, 2017 11:42 PM EST

Photo Credit: Facebook Logo

Facebook will solve the issues of having fake news posts circulating in the most popular social media. Users will soon be able to flag and report fake news stories after the company tests its new filtering tool in Germany. This is after German officials threatened to sue the internet companies including Facebook who does not practice strict management in their websites that promote "hate speech" and viral fake news.

Facebook Partners With Correctiv To Solve Fake News Issues

Facebook partners with the third-party fact checker, Correctiv, to test the new system. The users will send flagged stories to Correctiv allowing it to identify potential fake news and de-prioritizing it in Facebook's news feed algorithm. This decreases the exposure of the story and preventing it from going viral.

A Facebook spokesperson told the Financial Times that the system will be carried out to other countries after their implementation in Germany.

Germany Threatened Facebook To Take Legal Action

The action has been set by Facebook after Germany threatened to take legal actions against them due to the fake news which gone viral including that Germany's oldest church was set on fire. Germany Justice Minister, Heiko Mass, stated that they are willing to utilize all the legal authority at their disposal to prevent things like this to occur again.

Not only in Germany, the spread of fake news is also a huge problem in other countries including the USA. There was also a false story about the Pope Francis endorsing President Donald Trump. It has been virally spread out like a wildfire perceived by many as truthful. Some people say that similar fake news has contributed to the result of the election.

Facebook currently doesn't have a filtering system to identify which of the stories are true or fake. Sad to note that not only in Facebook, false news has been circulating around thru other social media. Hopefully, these popular social media sites will also address the issue.