Facebook announced Thursday it will begin “fact checking,” flagging and suppressing what it determines to be “fake news” and hoaxes in its News Feed, with Politifact, Factcheck.org, ABC News and Snopes doing the so-called “fact checking,” Business Insider reports.
Facebook will also reportedly use algorithms to monitor readership, and if a “story that appears fake is going viral, to determine if it should label the story as fake and bury it in people’s feeds.” Facebook will also effectively blackball Internet domains that it determines to be “fake news organizations” and prevent those domains from selling ads on Facebook.
However, Facebook’s head of media partnerships, Patrick Walker, was quick to point out that “We do not think of ourselves as editors” in what founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg now calls “a new kind of platform” and “space where people can be informed.” Coming from a company that openly discussed “What responsibility does Facebook have to help prevent President Trump in 2017?” that’s irony straight out of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.
