Facebook with further measures against propaganda and fake news
Just over a year before the US presidential election, Facebook is taking further measures to curb the spread of propaganda and fake news on the online network.
In future, state-controlled media - such as the Russian TV channel Russia Today - will be clearly marked as such. In addition, Facebook announced on Monday that the online network will make more prominent reference to posts that have been declared false by independent fact-checkers.
Facebook has become much better at fighting propaganda and fake news in recent years, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized in a conference call. At the same time, however, the online network is exposed to increasingly sophisticated attacks from countries such as Russia, Iran and China.
On Monday, Facebook also announced that it had discovered and stopped three campaigns from Iran and one from Russia that were posing as ordinary users. Their posts had targeted people in the USA, Latin America and North Africa.
Facebook had come under massive criticism because the online network was misused for large-scale campaigns from Russia in the context of the 2016 US presidential election, which aimed to exacerbate tensions in US society.
Accounts of elected politicians, election candidates and their employees are to be more secure in a program called "Facebook Protect", it was reported on Monday. Facebook wants to take tougher action against attempts to intimidate voters or, for example, provide false information about the location and process of the vote.
