Facebook and Microsoft are upping the ante on fake news, announcing moves to penalise or expose fake news.
Facebook is making changes to its Page publishing systems to help publishers ensure their content complies with the social networks policies and guidelines. And, for repeat offenders that have found ways to bypass Facebook bans and other penalties, it has updated its recidivism policy.
All the details of the changes were published in a blog post.
Microsoft is taking a different approach by adding an icon on the Address Bar when visiting an untrusted news site.
The new setting, which needs to be toggled on within the Edge settings, will display a small shield icon adjacent to the site’s URL in the search bar. The feature, called NewsGuard is a browser add-on that needs to manually activated.
A green shield with a checkmark represents a trusted news site. A red shield with an exclamation point is for a site that NewsGuard believes isn’t always accurate. Sites that haven’t been evaluated will show a grey shield.
NewsGuard won’t protect you from anything by blocking anything. Rather, it will simply provide visual indicator as to whether you can trust a news source. It’s available on iOS and Android devices by going to Edge’s settings and choosing News Rating from the menu.