Have you ever wondered what spreads fake news?
Well, algorithms are part of it.
According to BBC.com, juicy- yet-false stories that grow popular can be pushed out to new eyeballs by the software that runs social networks.
We’re all familiar with fake news, wittingly or otherwise. In fact, fake news was widely spread during the 2016 presidential election. Some internet and journalists have argued that fake news contributed to the election’s outcome.
But sites like Facebook and Google have plans to eliminate the ways that makes bogus news profitable.
Facebook users can pitch in to help the cause: By clicking on the upper-right-hand corner of a post, a user can report a suspicious story.
A team of fact-checkers will then follow the report and examine the news. If found to be fake, the post will be flagged as “disputed by third-party-fact-checkers” and attached to the story within the news feed.
Now that you know how to combat fake news on Facebook, be sure to tell your friends and relatives as well.
It is also essential to check a story’s source for credibility.
In addition, Facebook has once again changed its trending algorithms. Personal preferences are now a thing of the past.
“Facebook will no longer be personalized based on someone’s interests,” Facebook stated in a press release. “Everyone in the same region will see the same topics.”
As of now, a region is considered a country, so everyone in the United States should see the same trends.
The new algorithm will lower the possibility of fraudulent articles to trend because it will look at “the number of publishers that are posting articles on Facebook about the same topic,” accounting for coverage by multiple news outlets, Facebook wrote.
Let’s hope this works, because fake news content producers are quick to adapt to social media rule changes.
According to the New York Times, fake news is spread “from misinformed social media posts by regular people that are seized on and spread through a hyper partisan blogosphere [sic].”
Facebook’s new algorithm is being received positively.
