2017-02-06
Social network Facebook has made agreements with eight media companies in France to fact check Facebook users news articles. The agreement was made ahead of the presidential election in France later this year.

The eight companies are Le Monde, Agence France-Presse (AFP), L'Express, Libération, BFM-TV, Franceinfo, 20 Minutes, France Médias Monde.

The filter offered by Facebook, of course, isn't very automated, and requires lots of work from the media companies. Firstly, if a user sees something he or she considers fake news, it is sent to a portal which all eight media companies in France have access to. If at least two of them agree with the user's take on the news and confirm it's false, the content will be flagged as disputed on Facebook's News Feed. Such a flag will also need to have links to support the claim that the news is indeed false. Due to the way the process works, the media companies have been quite reluctant to join Facebook in its efforts, the main concern being the additional workload being given to their fact-checking teams.

Facebook launched similar filter for US election end of last year and Germany in January.

Recently both Facebook and Google have been under pressure from world leaders over the spreading of fake news, saying that misinformation could impact results of elections everywhere. And not only results of elections.