Facebook may restrict accounts that repeatedly spread misinformation

• Facebook is taking action against people who repeatedly share misinformation.
  
• With the help of independent fact-checkers, the platform is going to cut the reach of posts with false information.
  

Facebook has promised to take stricter action against users who frequently share misinformation and fake news. The US-based social media giant is introducing penalties to tackle offenders by restricting their accounts.

Misinformation on social media is a raging issue and these companies have taken several initiatives to curb its spread in the past. But with misinformation around Covid-19 seems to have alerted their resting senses, given the seriousness of the issue.

"Whether it's false or misleading content about COVID-19 and vaccines, climate change, elections, or other topics, we're making sure fewer people see misinformation on our apps," Facebook said in a blog post.

"Starting today, we will reduce the distribution of all posts in News Feed from an individual's Facebook account if they repeatedly share content that has been rated by one of our fact-checking partners," it added.

This means Facebook will be cutting down the reach of those posts shared by a person who has a history of sharing misinformation as per the fact-checking partners of the firm. So, the reach of the flagged post is lower from that individual on users’ News Feed.

The social media giant is also launching an improvement alert tool that notifies users if they're engaging with content that has been rated by a fact-checking partner. The new update is said to make it easier for anyone to identify that the information could be unreliable. Also, Facebook says it wants to provide helpful information with a pop-up to users before they hit like on a page that has repeatedly shared content that fact-checkers have rated.

"We want to give people more information before they like a Page that has repeatedly shared content that fact-checkers have rated, so you'll see a pop up if you go to like one of these Pages," said Facebook.

The notification will include the fact-checkers’ article with corrected facts debunking the claims made in the other article with a prompt to share the right article with their connections. It also includes a notification alerting users who share false information may have their posts ranked lower in News Feed so that it's not seen by a large number of people.

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