Facebook limits reach of groups that spread disinformation

Facebook says it will limit the global reach of groups that have spread disinformation more than once starting Wednesday. The social network does not want to ban those groups, but hopes in this way that fewer people will have to deal with them.

If Facebook has caught a group spreading misinformation more than once, posts to fewer people will appear in News Feed, Facebook says. Moreover, the social network will pay more attention to a ‘click hole’. If a page on Facebook attracts a lot of clicks but otherwise has little or no clicks on the internet from search engines or from direct traffic, the company sees this as suspicious and Facebook includes this in the algorithm to make the posts reach fewer people.

In addition, in the Page Quality tab, there will be a notification about whether there is anything known about clickbait from the page. That should inform users about the types of articles a page posts. The measures are part of a set of actions on Facebook, Facebook Messenger and Instagram that should increase the quality of posts in the feed and prevent the spread of clickbait and disinformation on the platforms. Other measures include increasing the authenticity check of articles by third parties and labeling messages as ‘forwarded’ on Messenger.

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Facebook video on assessing disinformation