Facebook to fight fake news in SA using fact-checking firm
Facebook says it has ramped up its fight against fake accounts, and removes more than one-million fake accounts a day mostly through artificial intelligence
In an effort to crack down on fake news and false information, on Thursday Facebook announced a third-party fact-checking initiative with Africa Check and news agency AFP. Facebook has been under pressure to clean up the stories it shares after the scandals around the Brexit vote and US elections in 2016, when Russian internet trolls were exposed for their manipulation of voter sentiment. Recently the pages for the Infowars website were finally shutdown for its patently false posts, including conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook massacre. "When fact-checkers mark a story as false, we reduce its exposure in news feed, leading to 80% less exposure," Emilar Gandhi, Facebook's public policy manager for the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) region said in Johannesburg. Acknowledging "challenges on our platform around fake news and false information", she said: "We know third-party fact-checking is not a silver bullet". Last week Facebook disclosed a hack that affected 50-...
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