Facebook is tweaking the News Feed to make room for fact checkers

In its own way, Facebook is taking responsibility for the spread of misinformation and changing how its products deliver news. The next phase of that is a test that “might” populate the News Feed with articles related to the one all your friends are sharing. As the GIF below illustrates, there’s a box below shared news story and it has a handful of links to articles about the same subject, but from different publishers and even fact checkers. The idea here is to give people more information on a topic before they mash the “share” button.

“That should provide people easier access to additional perspectives and information, including articles by third-party fact-checkers,” product manager Sara Su writes in a blog post. This move sounds like Facebook is trying to chip away at the echo chamber that social networks can become while also offering up objective facts related to a politician’s wild claims, for example.

Is it going to be effective? That’s anyone’s guess right now, but it should be easier for Facebook to track than full-page newspaper ads.

Source: Facebook Newsroom