Facebook secretly rates its users’ reaction to fake news
FACEBOOK is rating how trustworthy its users are with a secret “reputation score”, it has emerged.
The social media giant assigns each of its members a number between zero and one to determine how reliable they are when reporting fake news.
Facebook will not show the score to users or reveal exactly how it determines the trustworthiness of each user.
Tessa Lyons, the Facebook executive in charge of fighting online misinformation, said the rating had been developed in the last year. The score is meant to make it easier to battle fake news, as reports from users deemed trustworthy will be taken more seriously.
The network, which has struggled in its attempts to eliminate false news stories being spread online, relies on several independent fact-checking organisations it employs to respond when users report news stories as false.
Stories deemed fake are not banned but may carry warnings and are downgraded in the central news feed.
However, Ms Lyons said its fact checkers had been inundated by reports from users who merely disagreed with stories, flagging them as fake. Users who repeatedly flag legitimate stories will see their reputation score cut and future reports taken less seriously.
Ms Lyons told The Washington Post it was “not uncommon for people to tell us something is false simply because they disagree with the premise of a story or they’re intentionally trying to target a particular publisher”.
However, the news drew unflattering comparisons to China’s social credit score, a government-run system in which online behaviour can affect people’s access to jobs and mortgages.
Facebook denied that the rating amounted to a “centralised reputation score”. “We developed a process to protect against people indiscriminately flagging news as fake and attempting to game the system,” a spokesman said.
“We do this to make sure that our fight against misinformation is as effective as possible.”
Ms Lyons said several measures were used to assess a user’s credibility. She did not say how else Facebook determines somebody’s rating, saying revealing the information would make it easier for people to abuse the system.