Facebook will try to stem the spread of fake
news, even if it means cutting off some revenue.
Facebook will block Pages that repetitively
publish posts flagged as fake news from buying ads on the social network, the
company announced on Monday. “If Pages stop sharing false news, they may be
eligible to start running ads again,” Facebook product managers Satwik Shukla
and Tessa Lyons wrote in a company blog post.
Facebook already prohibits pages from buying
ads that link to articles flagged as fake, through a process involving
third-party fact-checkers that Facebook enacted earlier this year. But that policy
didn’t wholly prevent fake news publishers from using Facebook as a way to
drive traffic, since they could still buy ads linking to non-fake articles on
their sites. Now Facebook is extending the penalty.
After being criticized for fueling the rise of
fake news leading into last year’s presidential election, Facebook has been
stepping up its efforts to tamp down that spread. In addition to working with
outside companies like ABC News, PolitiFact and Snopes to confirm or dispute
links’ veracity, Facebook has kicked fake news publishers out of its ad network
and banned advertisers and Pages that try to camouflage links in ads and posts
that violate Facebook’s rules.
References
Ha, A. (2017, August 28). Facebook
says Pages that regularly share false news won’t be able to buy ads.
Retrieved from Tech Runch:
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/28/facebook-fake-news-ads/
