Facebook is making yet another change in its News Feed today, designed to reduce the number of stories that could offer false information or be deliberate hoaxes. This new feature comes a few months after Facebook announced it would give less relevance to News Feed posts that have what it considers to be "click-bait" headlines.
The company described just how it will accomplish this task:
To reduce the number of these types of posts, News Feed will take into account when many people flag a post as false. News Feed will also take into account when many people choose to delete posts. This means a post with a link to an article that many people have reported as a hoax or chosen to delete will get reduced distribution in News Feed. This update will apply to posts including links, photos, videos and status updates.Posts that receive lots of reports will be annotated with a message warning people that many others on Facebook have reported it.
Facebook adds that this new feature should not affect news stories that are designed to be satirical or humorous, so posts from The Onion should be safe.
Source: Facebook
