You’ve seen them in your feed: false reports of celebrity deaths, conspiracy theories presented as real news, promises of free iPads if you share a link, quotes attributed to the Pope that he never said.
Facebook (FB, Tech30) hasn’t hired a team of dedicated fact checkers to read every article. Instead, it’s outsourcing the task to community members with a new feature that lets anyone report news in their feed as a “false news story.” The more frequently a particular news story is reported, the less it will appear in anyone’s feed on Facebook.
The offending links, photos, videos and status updates won’t be removed, just gradually hidden a little more frequently from view. However, if a story gets a large number of flags, it will be marked with a warning message that says, “Many people on Facebook have reported that this story contains false information.” …. http://money.cnn.com
