Facebook previously announced that they are taking steps in making sure that users' Facebook News Feed have authentic content. Now, here's an update on how the company is currently doing and how they are handling the issue of fake news that many users were unknowingly sharing in their Facebook News Feed.
Facebook News Feed: initial efforts
Earlier on, Facebook asked for users' help to be more mindful when sharing posts which they might think are inaccurate, fake, or spam. This has been rampant in the social media platform but the issue was placed on the spot during the 2016 US Presidential elections when circulating fake news allegedly affected its results.
Facebook News Feed: new algorithms
Now Facebook is switching up its algorithm in its continuing battle to get rid of fake news. The company announced a change on Tuesday, that would boost posts people deem as genuine and not misleading, sensational, spammy, among others in its users' Facebook News Feed (via Mashable).
To be able to do this, Facebook is adding more markers to each post, which will signal its algorithms if a post's information is authentic or not. A component of that is resolved by the source page. With this, the company will take into account whether the source frequently posts spam or if it tries to gain feed placement by asking for likes or comments.
Facebook's algorithm will then check those markers along with others it already uses to sort posts, like how interested a user seems to be in the posting friend or page, and the general number of likes and comments.
Another determining factor for the Facebook News Feed effort is a model that the company says it has trained to recognize common signs associated with authenticity. The company did not go into much detail about what these characteristics might be as of yet.
Do you think these new efforts can totally eradicate fake content on users' Facebook News Feed?
