Facebook Launches New Tool To Tackle Fake News

Facebook has launched a new tool in its fight against the spread of fake news on its site. The issue of fake news on Facebook has been prominent since the 2016 US Election when it was claimed that some false stories were deliberately shared for political gain. This lead to widespread criticism from countries such as France who have imminent elections of their own. The new tool presents a pop-up to users who are trying to share disputed content, letting them know that “fact-checking sites, Snopes.com and Associated Press [have] disputed its accuracy”. It is currently only being presented to users in a select number of countries. The social networking site is already flagging up links to stories which have been disputed by independent organisations, which Facebook says lets users “decide for themselves what to trust and what to share”. 

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