In an attempt to divert attention from spam and clickbait on their site, Facebook announced that they will prioritize articles that are identified as original news reports on developing topics and articles with transparent authorship.
According to Facebook vice president for global news partnerships Campbell Brown and product manager Jon Levin, original reporting is defined as stories that are most often cited on developing stories and topics.
Fact-checking partners will also rate the accuracy of stories by interviewing primary sources, consulting public data and analyzing photos and videos. Once rated, the social media platform will boost fact-checked articles and label ones identified as fake news.
“Defining original reporting and the standards for it are complex, so we will continue to work with publishers and academics to refine this approach over time,” their blog post reads.
Aside from fact-checking efforts, the social media platform noted that they will be checking articles for bylines or staff pages at websites to determine who produces stories. Online publications that don’t have transparent information about their editorial staff will be demoted.
“We’ve found that publishers who do not include this information often lack credibility to readers and produce content with clickbait or ad farms, all content people tell us they don’t want to see on Facebook,” the Facebook executives explained.
This function will be available for limited markets, for now, sorting through reports in the English language. Facebook will later extend this function to news written in other languages in the future.
This move comes after the #StopHateforProfit online campaign, which calls on advertisers to cease ad spending on the top social media platform after it failed to protect its users against hate speech.
Header photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash
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