In order to combat the spread of misinformation on its platform Instagram has announced that it is expanding its fact checking program globally. So that the fact-checking organisations across the world can assess and rate misinformation on the platform.
Facebook owned Instagram in its blog post said, “We want you to trust what you see on Instagram. Photo and video-based misinformation is increasingly a challenge across our industry, and something our teams have been focused on addressing. In May of this year, we began working with third-party fact-checkers in the US to help identify, review, and label false information. These partners independently assess false information to help us catch it and reduce its distribution. Today, we’re expanding our fact-checking program globally to allow fact-checking organizations around the world to assess and rate misinformation on our platform.”
These days spreading false news and misinformation has become a new way of making money out of it either a weapon of state actors and agitators around the world. The third part fact checkers identifies false information so that the platform can stop them from spreading further. The fact checkers not only reviews the links but they also review photos as well as videos.
When they are rated as false or partly false the company reduces its distribution by removing it from explore and hashtag pages. Also, it will be labelled so that the audience can decide whether they want to read, trust and share. These labels will appear to everyone globally in feed, profile, stories and direct messages.
“We use image matching technology to find further instances of this content and apply the label, helping reduce the spread of misinformation. In addition, if something is rated false or partly false on Facebook, starting today we’ll automatically label identical content if it is posted on Instagram (and vice versa). The label will link out to the rating from the fact-checker and provide links to articles from credible sources that debunk the claim(s) made in the post.” the blog further explained.
When people submit feedback on story or comment or express disbelief on an article this indicates that the platform should review the story. The Independent third-party fact-checkers evaluate the stories, rate their accuracy and also write an article explaining the facts behind their rating. When they are rated as false the company will reduce its distribution in News Feed and can eventually can lead to a ban if they are repeat offenders.
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