Facebook has stopped using fact-checkers from the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at the Poynter Institute to determine if news stories are true or false. This change has created significant consternation for some people.
The way that Facebook worked with the fact-checkers is informative. If the fact-checkers deemed a story false, then Facebook would use key terms from the story to suppress instances of the false story. If there were false reports of a homeless man stabbing someone in Spring Hill, Florida, Facebook would then suppress all stories with the key terms homeless man, stabbing, Spring Hill, Florida.
An issue with suppressing stories in this fashion is that it could cause factual stories to be hidden because, maybe at the same time, another homeless man did stab someone in Spring Hill. This true story would be suppressed.
This could also be gamed. If a media organization wanted to suppress a story, they could find a story that would have the same keywords and fact-check that. The computer algorithms rely on the key terms to identify related articles to the fact check, so if stories contain the keywords they are grouped together and all the article’s impressions are reduced.
For instance, if a fact-checking news organization wanted to suppress stories about arsonists starting the LA fires for political reasons, they would find a false story about an arsonist starting a fire in LA and fact-check that story. Therefore, there is a fact check saying the stories with keywords LA, fires, and arsonists are false and Facebook would suppress all the stories about arsonists related to the LA fires.
True stories related to arsonists and LA fires would disappear from Facebook. If users shared a post about a true arsonist lighting the LA fires, it would not be shared with many of their friends. The friends that see it might receive a message that their friend was sharing something that was false and they would not be allowed to easily share it. If the media did not report on it and people did not see it on social media, they would assume that it was false.
Rocco Maglio is the co-publisher of The Hernando Sun and earns a living as software engineer and cybersecurity specialist. He has been a software engineer for 30 years and has a master’s degree in cybersecurity.
