Facebook has introduced features to tackle fake news on the social network amid claims that it swung the US election in favour of Donald Trump.
Adam Mosseri, vice-president of Facebook’s news feed, said that stories proved to be fake would not be removed but would be publicly flagged as disputed and would appear down users’ news feeds.
“We’ve focused our efforts on the worst of the worst, on the clear hoaxes spread by spammers for their own gain, and on engaging both our community and third-party organisations,” he said.
The changes are a response to the criticism of the company and Mark Zuckerberg, its founder, for his blasé reaction when claims about the influence of fake news stories surfaced.
Users can now report a suspected fake news story in two steps, not three: by clicking in the upper right-hand corner of a post, selecting “report post” then “it’s a fake news story”.
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If enough people report a story as a fake, Facebook will pass it on to third-party fact-checking organisations.
Facebook’s algorithms will also identify articles that are less likely to be shared by people who’ve read them, and push them down the company’s news-feed rankings.
“If reading an article makes people significantly less likely to share it, that may be a sign the story has misled people in some way,” Mr Mosseri said.
The company said it would reduce the financial incentives behind fake news too, making it harder for people to host lucrative advertisements.
“We cannot become arbiters of truth ourselves,” he added.
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Many analysts said the measures were a good start. However, some conservative commentators decried the moves.
Ben Shapiro, a political commentator, tweeted: “Facebook’s plan to crack down on ‘fake news’ relies on leftist fact-checkers. It could be a disaster.”