No matter how much Facebook works on trying to make it even easier to disseminate what information is real and what is fake, it seems people keep getting caught up in sharing incorrect and potentially dangerous fake news to each other. Even more so in this ongoing pandemic where people will believe any wild conspiracy theory about the virus or infectious 5G without paying attention to what the experts on the matter are saying.
To continue trying to combat this problem (seeing as Facebook can’t actually do anything about fixing the humans themselves), the company has announced it is going to display the location of “high-reach” Facebook pages and Instagram accounts on every post the owners share in order to give people “more information to help them gauge the reliability and authenticity of the content they see in their feeds.” Facebook didn’t say what it considers a high-reach page or account.
These changes are part of our broader efforts to protect elections and increase transparency on Facebook and Instagram so people can make more informed decisions about the posts they read, trust and share
I’m not convinced this change will necessarily solve their problems, as people tend to not pay much attention to any surrounding details of the information they spread, but hopefully, it can make some dent and possibly get people to think just that little bit more before they spread their news around. What the company really needs to get better at is deleting all fake news entirely and blocking people who are guilty of sharing it. Yes, I know that means that hardly anyone will then be able to login to their social networks, but then they can at least use all that extra time to do some actual research.
Last Updated: April 23, 2020
