Facebook False News Report (Photo : Facebook)
Facebook took another step to reduce fake news on the news feed as it announced that it will reduce the distribution of links reported to be hoax news.
Users will be able to report a link for being a "false news story," the Washington Post reported.
Facebook will not be deleting the reported posts, but will show a warning that informs the user that it is not a true news story.
Hoax posts have been widely shared in the social network, with others being shared up to 1 million times. Users seldom look further into whether the news they are reading is true or not.
Satirical news sites have profited from the fake news scheme for years as more web traffic means more ad revenue.
Empire Sports writer Robert Winland told Washington Post that he writes "for the money." He said that he had an income of around $10,000 a day after the false news that the English graffiti artist Banksy was arrested in October 2014.
However, traffic towards satirical news sites may start to decline after Facebook's new update.
If a post has numerous reports of being fake, it will get "reduced distribution" in the social media network giant's News Feed. The new update applies not only to shared links, but also status updates, videos and photos as well, according to the Facebook Newsroom.
"To reduce the number of these types of posts, News Feed will take into account when many people flag a post as false," wrote software engineer Erich Owens.
