Facebook Uses Survey to Curb Fake News

By Indo-Asian News Service | Updated: 6 December 2016 11:38 IST

Highlights

Facebook confirmed this is an effort to curb spread of misinformation
Critics have blamed Facebook for influencing the US-elections
Other metrics also being used for finding clickbait and fake stories

In an effort to stop the proliferation of fake news, Facebook has initiated a "Survey" that asks users to what extent they think an article uses misleading language.

According to a report in TechCrunch, Facebook has confirmed that this is an official effort to curb the spread of misinformation.

"The company uses surveys somewhat like this to test the general quality of the news feed, and it has used other metrics to attempt to define rules for finding clickbait and fake stories. This appears to be the first direct coupling of those two practices: old parts doing a new job," the report noted.

Below an article on Facebook appears "to what extent do you think that this link's title uses misleading language?" and its response choices range from "Not at all" to "Completely".

Facebook is asking whether this @PhillyInquirer headline is fake? pic.twitter.com/cCUpwtvQlS
— Chris Krewson (@ckrewson) December 5, 2016

Critics have blamed Facebook for influencing the US-elections in favour of President-elect Donald Trump by circulating a "host of fake news stories about political topics."

(Also see: Facebook Denies Report It Failed to Deploy a Tool to Weed Out Fake News)

This step is seen as Facebook's attempt to become transparent in how it is training its algorithms to detect misinformation and fake news.

"But (it) is also an example of using its user base as, essentially, a rich well of free data into which it can dip its bucket any time it wants and on its own terms. And what it does with the contents of that bucket is anyone's guess," the report added.

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