APC Australia

The latest developmen­ts in the tech world

Separating the chaff from the grain.

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Over half the world’s internet users get their news from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and most swallow the story whole without checking its veracity. After much finger-pointing at Facebook’s promotion of fake news during the US Presidenti­al election, Zuckerberg promised to take action and, in a lengthy letter in February, wrote, “We’ve made progress fighting hoaxes the way we fight spam, but we have more work to do”.

Earlier this year, the social media giant announced the outsourcin­g of factchecki­ng to third parties and dropping flagged news stories to the bottom of a user’s feed. Now there’s another tool in town to combat fake news — a ‘disputed’ tag is being rolled out.

Stories flagged by users as fake are sent to the third-party fact-checkers for validation. If the story is identified as fake and it shows up on user news feeds, it will be accompanie­d by a ‘disputed’ warning label, along with a link to the fact-checking sites that will explain why it isn’t true.

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