Facebook has launched a third-party fact-checking programme to help assess the accuracy of news in South Africa, and reduce the spread of misinformation.<\/p>\n
This will be achieved by working with two partners: Africa Check – Africa’s first independent fact-checking organisation – and AFP – a well-respected news organisation – which are both part of a global network of fact-checking organisations, certified by the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network.<\/p>\n
The fact-checking programme will rely on feedback from the Facebook community as one of many signals Facebook will use to raise potentially false stories to fact-checkers for review.<\/p>\n
Local articles will be fact-checked alongside the verification of photos and videos.<\/p>\n
“If one of our fact-checking partners identifies a story as false, Facebook will show it lower in News Feed, significantly reducing its distribution,” the social media platform said.<\/p>\n
Once a fact-checker rates a piece of content as false, Facebook said it is able to reduce its future views by an average of 80%, helping to curb economic incentives and reduce its spread.<\/p>\n
When third-party fact-checkers write articles about a news story, Facebook will show these in Related Articles immediately below the story in News Feed.<\/p>\n
Page Admins and people on Facebook will also receive notifications if they try to share a story or have shared one in the past that’s been determined to be false.<\/p>\n