Facebook-owned Instagram is increasing its efforts in fighting "fake news" across its platform. For years, Social Media websites and apps have been the prime target of these false content pieces. Governments around the world have asked these companies to step up in combating misleading or outright false articles.
As part of their ever-increasing efforts to do such, Instagram has added a new feature that automatically flags bogus posts. It uses third-party fact-checking services and organizations as well as community feedback to implement this new feature.
It will also automatically flag down false Facebook-checked content that is shared on the picture-centric platform. The opposite runs too true: any Instagram-checked content that is flagged to be false and then is shared on Facebook will be marked as such. Users who repeatedly share these contents will be removed from the Explore and hashtag pages, according to the social media giant.
Instagram says that it will also use image-matching technology to curb the spread of similar articles posted in other fake news sites. This will help in curbing bogus accounts that are made just to specifically spread fake news, as well as catch users who try to bypass Instagram's detection tools.
Lies in the age of Social Media
With the 2020 US elections coming close, Facebook has also announced new safeguards in order to combat the foreign interference.
It has recently shut down networks of foreign accounts that seek to spread misinformation during the campaign period. Facebook has claimed that they've taken down over 50 networks, four of which were removed quite recently. These pages operated from Iran and Russia and were targeting the US, North Africa, and Latin America.
It has launched Facebook Protect, which will require accounts of those who hold pages of political campaigns and candidates to use increased security measures such as two-factor authentication. Facebook Protect also tracks unusual login locations or unverified devices.
The company has also increased page transparency, allowing users to know who runs which pages, where the pages run and operate from. It also informs users if the page was recently merged with another page. Facebook has also begun labeling which news outlets are publicly funded, or are state-controlled as well. This allows users to easier scrutinize which pages may or may not be producing publicly funded propaganda.
The giant has also allowed launched a new service that allows journalists to see what, where, and how much political candidates are spending on their platform. They can see if an ad was running on Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger, and who the ad was targeted was. They can also see how much a certain candidate has spent on ads on both Instagram and Facebook.
While Facebook, and its subsidiary Instagram, has been working throughout the past few years in combating fake news and other bogus articles, the social media companies are still under fire. Primarily, they have been accused of allowing political candidates and parties to lie in their ads on the social media platform.
