Facebook users have complained the media of too many hoaxes in their news feed. Facebook is now working to address the complaints and is trying to cut down fake news from appearing on users’ profile pages. The social network introduced an update that claims to reduce the distribution of news that has been marked as a hoax by users.
Facebook said that it had been receiving complaints from users saying that they receive a lot of hoaxes or fake news on their news feed. Users complained that they end up sharing the news and later realizing that it was a trick. Facebook has now stepped up to fix the issue by introducing an update yesterday. Facebook’s update will help cut down the distribution of posts that have marked as hoaxes by other users.
According to research conducted by Facebook’s engineer Erich Owens and scientist Udi Weinsburg, it is a common trend that people end up sharing these fake posts and then later realizing that the falsity in them. According to their research, people are twice more likely to delete these posts if they receive it from a friend.
The company had been conducting a study on rumors and false stories since a long time and in this context, Facebook had even released a note in April 2014. The note was published under the name “The Strange Truth About Fiction.”
Facebook’s bids users to report these hoaxes appearing in their news feeds just as they report spam. This would help the company identify and plummet the distribution of flagged posts. Facebook also claimed that if a significant number of people report a certain post as a hoax, the website will annotate the post with a special message. The message accompanying the post would serve as a warning against the potential falsity of the news.
