Facebook Will Now Heavily Penalize Fake News Spreaders

Facebook Will Now Heavily Penalize Fake News Spreaders

Facebook is done treating fake news spreaders with kid gloves. The social giant today has announced it will penalize individuals that repeatedly share misinformation or fake news on their platform by giving users who view their content a huge disclaimer as well as downranking their posts down the News Feed where no one can see them.

While Facebook is already downranking individual posts that have been debunked by fact-checkers, these posts usually still manage to gain traction before they’re reviewed. People also still tend to share information fake news that’s already been proven false as well, which necessitated a new system to penalize users that repeatedly share fake news and misinformation.

Facebook is rolling out a new feature that will give new users pop-up warnings when they try to follow a page that has repeatedly shared false or misleading information, and users who are repeat offenders will also get notifications that their posts may be less visible on the News Feed. Facebook will also include the fact check for the post in question with the pop-up and will give users the opportunity to delete the post instead of posting it.

The new change comes in at a crucial time for Facebook in the US, where it’s battling a wave of vaccine-related misinformation as well as record vaccine hesitancy for COVID-19 jabs that are required to get things back to normal. The company previously had to reign in many posts related to COVID-19 – its cause, cure, care, and prevention – at the beginning of the pandemic, and it looks like its adding another tool to its belt when dealing with the super-spreaders of misinformation.

Facebook did not say how many instances it required for you to be considered a fake news spreader to trigger the new feature, or how long these “strikes” against your account last. We’re happy that we’re finally seeing Facebook take the hammer to fake news spreaders worldwide.

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