Facebook Pages Promoting Fake News To Get Ad Banned

Mark Zuckerberg is not done trying to undo his mistake with Facebook because he is now targeting specific pages on the platform. Any page that promotes the dissemination of fake news articles or videos will not be eligible for ad promotions. They will still be able to do and post whatever they want, they simply won’t rank as well.

Facebook pages can increase their exposure by basically paying to have their rankings boosted. The platform will then start sending out advertising posts on accounts that might be interested in what they have to sell, promote, or say. Any pages that are found to be committing the heinous act of spreading fraudulent material will no longer have this option, TechCrunch reports.

This is yet another step that the platform is taking in order to bring back the credibility that it lost when it helped spur Donald Trump to become the current President of the United States. According to Facebook’s Product Director Rob Leathern, the platform has been trying to address the matter in three ways.

One is to cut off the financial incentive that publications had to post fake news on the platform. Another is to identify as well as slow the spread of any news considered fake. The third is to help users identify news stories that contain false statements.

This ad-buying ban falls under the financial aspect, where Facebook is trying to cut off pages that are buying ads in order to spread fake news. This new policy will make it much harder for such pages to gain an audience.

With regards to concern that opinion articles or blog posts might be unfairly targeted, it’s important to note that Facebook is only looking at the facts, Forbes reports. Pages can post opinion pieces all they want for as long as the articles don’t make any verifiably false claims.