Facebook Wants To Punish Those That Share Hoaxes Repeatedly, By Shaming Them

The internet is plagued by fake news. Intentionally or not, misinformation, disinformation and malinformation have made a comfortable home on social media.

And Facebook as the largest of them all, is where many of the hoaxes are being shared. The social giant has made numerous attempts to at least limit their spread. And this time, it's adding tags to those Pages that posted fake or misleading posts repeatedly.

The tag reads: "This page shares misinformation repeatedly".

In other words, Facebook ready to shame them.

Going beyond that, Facebook is also punishing individual accounts that share misleading news by restricting their presence on the platform's News Feed.

And additionally, the company has also optimized its notifications system to detect misleading news, in order to make it easier for users to pinpoint the sources of fake news and immediately correct the details by fast-checkers.

In a blog post, Facebook said that:

The company added that:

On a page at its Business Help Center, Facebook said that:

"In order to more effectively fight misinformation, we take action against Pages and domains that repeatedly share or publish content that is rated as False or Altered. Such Pages and domains will see their distribution reduced, will lose their ability to monetise and advertise, and will lose their ability to register as a news Page on Facebook. If a registered news Page repeatedly shares false news, its news Page registration will be revoked."

"Over time, Pages and domains can restore their distribution and ability to monetise and advertise if they stop sharing misinformation."

This is because Facebook thinks that when it comes to fighting false news, one of the most effective approaches is by removing the economic incentives for the creators of the misinformation.

"We've found that a lot of fake news is financially motivated. These spammers make money by masquerading as legitimate news publishers and posting hoaxes that get people to visit their sites, which are often mostly ads," the company said.

Facebook didn’t actually explain or detail what it considers "repeatedly" sharing misinformation.

But what is certain, the social networking giant is ramping up its efforts in combating misleading information on its network.

As a start, it was reported that Facebook removed 110,000 pieces of COVID-19' coronavirus-related information following the news.