Facebook Blocks Ads From Fake News Pages

Facebook is blocking advertisements from Pages that dish out fake news, taking away the financial incentives that drive some to create these faux news bits. This is the company's latest effort to rid its service of fake news, whether it's the variety designed to manipulate public opinion or simply garbage that individuals use to rake in ad revenue. The ad-blocking action will only apply against a Page that repeatedly shares such stories, however.

Facebook is depending on third-party fact checkers to flag fake news as false, and it is basing its punitive actions against offending Pages on these flags. According to the company, it has found some entities have created Pages in order to build up audiences for sharing fake news with wider audiences. Facebook already prevented ads from being run that take visitors to fake news articles.

If a Page is found to repeatedly share articles that have been flagged as fake news, Facebook will block the Page from buying ads on the social network. The company may reverse its decision to block ads from a Page if that Page stops sharing fake news articles. The goal is to disrupt 'economic incentives' surrounding the creation and sharing of fake news, according to Facebook.

Back in April, Facebook announced various steps it was taking to tackle the fake news issue, including using machine learning to help spot spam accounts, improving its ability to detect fake accounts, and more.

That has been followed by updates over past months that, for example, reduce how many links users get to low-quality web pages. Earlier this month, Facebook also pushed out updates that deal with the issue of cloaking so that people get what they expect when clicking on an ad or link.

SOURCE: Facebook