A massive and exceedingly popular platform for the sharing and spreading of news content to the general public, Facebook has become the primary news source for millions of people around the globe.
Now, in renewed efforts to gauge its own responsibility to halt the spreading of fake news and to inform their users, Facebook is identifying certain media outlets that could be government mouthpieces to their users.
The social media goliath announced these measures in part to protect the integrity of the 2020 US elections, and in another part to protect its reputation from further damage, especially after the 2018 Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
“We are starting to apply labels to those state-controlled media outlets,” Facebook says on their blog. “We are providing greater transparency into these publishers because they combine the influence of a media organization with the strategic backing of a state, and we believe people should know if the news they read is coming from a publication that may be under the influence of a government.”
These labels are appearing globally in the Ad Library Page, according to Techweez, as well as on Pages and in the Page Transparency section. The label will also begin appearing on posts in the News Feed over the course of the week.
Facebook checks on various factors that may indicate editorial control by a certain government. These factors include things like mission statements, or mandates of a media producer, as well as ownership structure, editorial guidelines, information about the newsroom leadership and staff, sources of funding and accountability mechanisms.
If Facebook determines that the publication in question has enough protections to ensure editorial independence, they will not apply the label.
Facebook will also consider country-specific factors like press freedom and they will consult open-source research conducted by academics and leading experts.
Edited by Luis Monzon
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