Context is for Kings — Facebook’s Latest Innovation Against Fake News

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Facebook has recently announced a new feature being tested in their newsfeed which adds context to shared links.

More Information Available. The button to access more information related to links in your Facebook news feed.

This contextual information is “pulled from across Facebook and other sources, such as information from the publisher’s Wikipedia entry… trending articles or related articles about the topic”. The hope is that this contextual information will give users the information they need to decide whether the link in question is reliable or not.

This is the best move I have seen any of the platforms take in response to fake news so far. This approach provides a non-invasive system which helps people make up their own minds about what they want to believe and share, rather than deciding what is and is not true for them.

Professional Fact Checkers Investigate ‘Laterally’

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How to End Google’s Monopoly

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Over a year ago I said Google would never implement a fact based assessment in their algorithm because I thought they would understand that making such a change would be the first step to losing their search monopoly.

I was wrong.

The maniacs actually did it.

It’s still uncertain exactly what they have implemented since Google tends to not tell people how their algorithm works, but they did make an announcement back in April that they would be taking measures to punish “low quality content” such as misleading information, offensive results, hoaxes and conspiracy theories.

The road to hell…

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