Facebook Announces New ‘Anti-Fake News Feature’ In Germany

While Facebook isn’t the only source, it does realise that it innocently does spread Fake News.

In the face of growing criticism of the increasing fake news on Facebook newsfeeds, the social media giant is about test it’s new Fake News Filtering tools in Germany.

This comes just in time for the German Federal elections that are scheduled to take place over the next few months.

With this new system that will be implemented in the next couple of weeks, Facebook’s users in Germany will be able to report a story as a fake. Once a story is so reported, it will then be sent to Correctiv, an independent Berlin-based fact checking organization which will examine the story.
If the story is then found unreliable, it will be flagged as “disputed” on the social media platform, meaning that while people will be able to share it, but the story will come with a warning.

Another step that might help counter the fake news epidemic is that once a story is flagged as “disputed”, it will not be prioritized by Facebook’s news feed algorithm.
The Newsfeed algorithm is what works to allow any story to trend on the social media platform, garnering it more eyeballs, and thus more credibility.

This is imperative, because lets face it, in this socially-enabled world, if a lie is repeated long enough, the amount of echo that it creates on the worldwide chatter space of social media offers is sufficient to confuse most people between the concoction and the truth. Quite easily, in fact.

This move also comes in the face of the latest proposition by the German government that proposed a law that would levy a €500,000 ($523,320) fine for each single piece of misinformation published and not removed by the network within 24 hours.
This proposition came after the investigation of the Berlin Truck Attack from last month was widely talked about online, with mostly fake news being propagated, leading almost to a situation of chaos within Berlin.

It’s safe to say, Germany had had enough of Facebook, and the impact of fake news.

Thankfully, it’s not only Germany that will gain the power of the truth.

Facebook also started a similar approach in the United States of America, after the new villain of Fake News on Facebook was uncovered and highly criticized during the last U.S. elections, which helped Trump ascend to the Presidency.
Fake News on social media platforms was believed to have swayed the vote quite heavily, and to have created more like a scene of chaos within the country, post the election, where the website saw a huge deal of anger and frustration directed at it.

Facebook then partnered with bona fide news organisations in the U.S. like ABC News and the Associated Press, plus fact-checking groups Politifact, Snopes and FactCheck, to verify controversial stories.

In Germany, the cause for concern is an upcoming election, as much as the social order of the country. In the face of the Syrian refugee crisis, and the everyday toughening politics of the space, Germany has been the hub for the influx of refugees fleeing the terror of the attacked spaces. With the Berlin Truck Attack of last month, and the fake news surrounding it, not only did it point fingers to refugees, it also pointed fingers at the policies of Angela Merkel, who had strongly supported the influx of refugees into Germany, last year.

In an interview with the Guardian, Steffen Seibert, a government spokesman, said the authorities were dealing with a phenomenon of a dimension “not seen before” in Germany.

The fear then is that fake rumors concerning migrants and refugees might spur the rise of populist parties, stirring hate against foreigners, in addition to perhaps leading to an election that might be spurred by bias, and by misinformation.

Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg visited Berlin this past week to meet with government officials in the same regard. In an interview with Germany’s top-selling daily paper Bild, she emphasized that Facebook can’t possibly single-handedly deal with the epidemic of fake news, stating how important the reliance on third parties for the checking of the information is for them.

“We don’t want to decide what the truth is, and I don’t believe anyone wants us to do that”, said Sandberg. “When we say that we can’t take it on ourselves, that doesn’t mean that we don’t want to take any responsibility. We do take responsibility”.

Facebook seems to have taken the first step to try to curb the epidemic. The success of the step can only be measured over time, so we shall keep an eye out for this one.

In the meantime, don’t believe every headline you read on your Facebook newsfeed, open those articles, read through them, weigh their authenticity based on the source they come from, and only then share the information.

Curbing the epidemic is still a long way to go, and we all need to take our few step to fight against the spread of misinformation. As we’d written earlier, we are as much to blame in propagating it, albeit innocently.

As an old mentor of mine used to say — “In order to not land up in a spot that we’re going to be surprised, check you premise before you believe something”. I learnt form this, you should too — don’t believe everything you read.
Take the time to check your premise before you make up your mind!

Originally published at Chip-Monks.