Facebook Now Lets Users ‘Dispute’ Articles And Tag Them As Fake News

Fake news articles, sites, and enthusiasts are everywhere. In order to fight back, Facebook has been ramping up its efforts to thoroughly remove the incentive for sites to spread fraudulent and malicious information. The social media site also recently added a new feature called the “Dispute” button, which basically allows users or misinformation watchdogs to tag a particular content as fake news.

The new feature was first reported by Gizmodo, which means that Facebook is making good on its promise to provide more options for flagging fake news. This is just the latest in the efforts to make sure that any publication that labels itself as news should adhere to the “Code of Principles” that a non-profit journalistic organization had proposed.

In one instance, an article by a site called the TheSeattleTribune was flagged by both PolitiFact and Snopes.com. The title of the article was “Trump’s Unsecured Android Device Source Of Recent White House Leaks,” which certainly didn’t reflect any kind of factual assertion.

By the time the article was flagged, it had already been viewed over 200,000 times, Forbes reports. This means that the site financially benefited from the traffic that it had garnered through the publication of false content. Now that it has been disputed, the number of people clicking on the article should decrease, but there will still be those who will visit the page in order to confirm their own skewed view of reality.

Fortunately, it would seem that Facebook is also trying to curb the flood of fake news by compiling a list of publications and websites that are repeat offenders. These websites have since been banned from receiving ad revenue from the usual outlets, but they are still finding ways to make money off of unethical practices. With the new “Dispute” feature, users can be hopeful that this won’t be the case for long.