Facebook expands fact-checking tools, targeting images

Facebook announced an expansion of several initiatives this week to combat the spread of misinformation on the social network used by more than 2 billion people.

In a company blog, Facebook acknowledged that fake news reports and doctored content have increasingly become image-based in some countries, making it harder for readers to discern whether a photo or video related to a news event is authentic.

The company said it has expanded its fact-checking of traditional links posted on Facebook to photos and videos. Partnering with thirdparty experts trained in visual verification, the company will also flag images that have been posted on Facebook in a misleading context, such as, for example, a photo of a previous natural disaster or shooting that is displayed as a present-day event.

Facebook will also use machine-learning tools to identify duplicates of debunked stories that continue to pop up on the network. The company said that more than a billion pictures, links, videos and messages are uploaded to the social platform everyday, making fact-checking difficult to execute by human review. The automated tools will help the company find domains and links that are spreading the same claims that have already been proved false.

Facebook has said it will use AI to limit misinformation, but the latest update applies to finding duplicates of false claims.

Earlier this year, Facebook said it would start a new project to help provide independent research on social media’s role in elections and within democracies. The commission in charge of the elections research is hiring staff to run the initiative, will launch a website in the coming weeks and will request research proposals on the scale and effects of misinformation on Facebook, the social network said.

The other updates announced include using machine learning to identify repeat offenders of misinformation and expanding Facebook’s fact-checking partnerships internationally.

Mike Ananny, an assistant professor of communications at the University of Southern California, said that the updates are a step in the right direction but that Facebook has not fully explained what it’s doing to combat fake news or shared details about how its human-led and automated detection systems actually work.