Thursday, September 7, 2017

Facebook blocks Pages sharing fake news from buying ads



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/