Facebook tests adding trust indicators to news stories

Facebook has announced that it will add special trust indicators to news items on the platform, in an effort to increase the reliability of the news and prevent the spread of fake news.

For the time being, this is still part of a test that is being conducted with a number of parties. Participants in the test can add additional information that can be consulted via the trust indicators. This concerns, for example, the ethics policy of the publishing party, the ownership structure of the company and the policy with regard to fact checking and rectifications.

Facebook is looking to expand the addition of the special indicators in the coming months, though the company has not yet specified a specific date for when it will be broadly introduced to all users.

In October, Facebook already started a test with new functionality that gave users the possibility to consult additional context about the message read from the news feed. A special icon was available to request more information, such as an explanation about the publicist, an explanation of how the post is shared by people on Facebook, and other articles on the same topic. The new indicators build on this.

The indicators were developed by the Trust Project, an international group of news organizations represented by Santa Clara University. This consortium is funded by Google, among others.