26Jul/18Off
Tech Companies Like Facebook and Twitter Are Drawing Lines. It’ll Be Messy.
Ms. Bickert said she has set up regular meetings with a range of experts to hash out how Facebook should draw the lines on a host of specific kinds of speech. In general, the company removes content that is illegal, dangerous, fraudulent or otherwise spammy and inauthentic. But for areas that are less black-and-white, like misinformation, it takes a different approach.
“We reduce the distribution of information that is inaccurate, and we inform people with more context and perspective,” said Tessa Lyons, a product manager who heads Facebook’s effort to curb misinformation in the News Feed.
To do this, Facebook has partnered with dozens of fact-checking organizations around the world. It limits the spread of news that has been deemed false by showing those posts lower in users’ News Feeds, and it also displays more truthful articles as an alternative to ones that aren’t accurate.