Facebook is taking new steps to clamp down on the amount of false or hoax posts that appear in users’ news feeds.
In a statement, software engineer Erich Owens and research scientist Udi Weinsberg revealed Facebook will, with immediate effect, reduce the circulation of posts that are reported as hoaxes and add an annotation to posts that have received many of these types of reports to warn others on Facebook.
Facebook will not, however, be removing stories people report as false and are not reviewing content to decide its accuracy.
“We’re always looking to people on Facebook to tell us how we can improve this experience,” wrote the duo. “We’ve heard from people that they want to see fewer stories that are hoaxes, or misleading news.”
Facebook recently added an option for users to report a story as false in much the same way they can report a post as spam (see below).
Facebook image via Shutterstock
