Facebook Taps ABC News, Others, to Seek Out Fake News

By Chris Ariens 

ABC News is among four fact-based news entities, and the only broadcast network, selected by Facebook to help rid the social network of fake news.

Adweek has the details on how this will all work. But for ABC’s part, it will use its newsgathering resources to fact check stories flagged by Facebook users. The news division will use existing staff–about a half dozen at any given time–to report out sources and present evidence about how they came to a conclusion about whether a flagged story is fact or fiction. The other fact checkers include Snopes.com, Factcheck.org, and Politifact.

“It’s important to us that the stories you see on Facebook are authentic and meaningful,” writes Facebook’s VP of product Adam Mosseri in a blog post announcing the initiative. “We’re excited about this progress, but we know there’s more to be done. We’re going to keep working on this problem for as long as it takes to get it right.”

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Just this morning, the Pew Research Center revealed that 64 percent of U.S. adults say fake news stories cause a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current events. 14 percent of those surveyed say they’ve shared a story they knew was fake at the time. 16 percent said they shared a story they later realized was fake.

Facebook and ABC have been partnering on projects for nearly a decade, going back to the 2008 election. In 2010, Diane Sawyer interviewed CEO Mark Zuckerberg marking the site reaching 500 million users.

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