Facebook is going to take tough actions against false news. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company to turn strict in improving such things by removing all content that may lead to real physical harm.
In one of his recent interviews he added if the posts result with real physical harm or if attacks individuals, their policy is to remove such feed as those should not be there on the platform.
Lately Facebook has been accused for helping in the triggering of violence in Sri Lanka, India, Myanmar and couple of other countries. This is the reason the new policy probably may have been introduced.
Zuckerberg further said, “The approach that we have taken to false news is not to say, you can’t say something wrong on the internet. I think that would be too extreme.”
He mentioned that his social media portal is committed to look at such things which are getting the most distribution. Several of those are sent to fact-checkers if people flag as potential hoaxes. Hence, in this way the distribution of such false news is reduced.
In India Facebook’s WhatsApp is more used in spreading false news. In past more than a year such content has led to the death of at least 29 people.
Zuckerberg said the policy change of Facebook would not apply to WhatsApp now.
Indian is undergoing polls next year and with more than 200 million Facebook users in the country it is time to see how Zuckerberg’s policies go ahead in minimizing the spread of such false news.
He said, “We are very focused on making sure that we get this right, not just broadly, but in all the elections that are coming up.”
