Facebook Is Getting More Aggressive With Its Fake News Fact-Checking

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Written by Eric Liebermanon

Facebook is revamping its fight against fake news by announcing Thursday it will get more aggressive in tracking dubious reporting.

The social media service turned tech conglomerate originally announced in April that it was improving its “Related Articles” system in which different content from various outlets on the same story is provided. Part of this process, which is intended to “give people more perspectives,” is discerning false or misleading news stories.

Now Facebook seems to be increasing these operations.

“We will start using updated machine learning to detect more potential hoaxes to send to third-party fact checkers,” Sara Su, Product Manager of News Feed, said in an updated official blog post. “If an article has been reviewed by fact checkers, we may show the fact checking stories below the original post. In addition to seeing which stories are disputed by third-party fact checkers, people want more context to make informed decisions about what they read and share.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last year that he would be partnering with Snopes as one of its third-party fact checking organizations, even though it almost exclusively employs leftists and has dubious verification skills. (RELATED: Snopes Deliberately Omits Key Details To Protect Kerry’s State Dept.)

The tech wunderkind also hired former CNN anchor Campbell Brown, who is an adamant member of the “never Trump” faction.

The latest push to expand its fake-news fighting initiative is slightly surprising since Zuckerberg recently declined shareholders’ demands to be more aggressive during a board meeting.

Facebook has been constantly pressured in recent months to decipher and purge deceiving or fraudulent news stories on its platform, even though subjectivity seems to be liable to even the most seemingly scientific processes

Nevertheless, it is pushing full steam ahead by obliging to such external clamoring, which includes people like former President Barack Obama, and other prominent liberals. (RELATED: Facebook Updated Trending News Section A Year After Criticism Of Liberal Bias)

It isn’t capitulating to all of the pressure, though.

Facebook denounced a new German law in May which is set to force social media companies to remove content considered to include hate speech or misleading news.

“The draft law provides an incentive to delete content that is not clearly illegal when social networks face such a disproportionate threat of fines,” Facebook said in an official statement, according to Business Insider. “It would have the effect of transferring responsibility for complex legal decisions from public authorities to private companies. And several legal experts have assessed the draft law as being against the German constitution and non-compliant with EU [European Union] law.”

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