Over the next month, Instagram will be adding ‘False Information’ labels to posts containing fake news and debunked by Facebook’s fact checkers.
The labels will appear in both the main feed and Instagram Stories. Users will still be able to view the content by clicking “See Post” or clicking “See Why” to learn about why it was flagged.
A pop-up will also appear warning the user that the post will have a
“False Information” label if they choose to share it.
Over the next month, content that has been rated “false” or “partly false” by an independent fact-checker will be more prominently labeled so you can better understand if information you’re seeing is reliable. pic.twitter.com/TPgOjL6HIK
— Instagram (@instagram) ٢١ أكتوبر ٢٠١٩
This is part of Facebook’s initiative to protect the 2020 US elections from fake news going viral on their platform and on Instagram.
“We have a responsibility to stop abuse and election interference on our platform,” said Facebook in a press release. “That’s why we’ve made significant investments since 2016 to better identify new threats, close vulnerabilities and reduce the spread of viral misinformation and fake accounts.”
According to the press release, Facebook removed 45,000 pieces of content so far that spread fake news and 90% of them were detected by the system before being reported by any one.
Instagram is now taking better measures to prevent the spread of fake news after the Senate Intelligence Committee called Instagram “the most effective tool” on interfering in the 2016 election in the second volume report.
“We’re just still playing catch up,” said Instagram chief Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) when asked why their fact-checking policies are different than Facebook.
“On Facebook we started by focusing on links and articles because that’s where we saw the most issues, and have since expanded to images and video. Most of the work to reduce misinfo on Instagram is done by that same team.”
We're just still playing catch up. On Facebook we started by focusing on links and articles because that's where we saw the most issues, and have since expanded to images and video. Most of the work to reduce misinfo on Instagram is done by that same team.
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) ١٧ أكتوبر ٢٠١٩
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Image Credit: Shutterstock.