Facebook will punish you for spreading disinformation

Facebook will significantly strengthen the fight against the spread of misinformation on its social network. After the new one, it will also strike against individuals who repeatedly share misinformation and misleading content.

Until recently, what the company did with site and group posts will now begin to do with personal accounts – limiting their reach. The Bloomberg portal dealt with the topic.

It also came to individuals

Simply put, the new system will also penalize personal accounts that regularly share problematic content. In practice, the reach of everything that such accounts publish on the social network is to be limited. It will therefore not just be a limitation of a specific contribution.

It is not yet clear exactly how the new system will work. Reduction of reach is mentioned, so posts should still be visible, but only for a significantly reduced circle of users. How big the penalty will be, and whether there will be a complete blockage of problematic contributions, is still questionable.

It is also not known whether the system will be fully automatic or will require intervention by Facebook employees. Another question is whether the reach of user accounts will be reduced permanently or only temporarily. The only thing that is clear is that the fight will be more intense.

Multiple choice

However, the general assumption is that the restriction will be only temporary, although it is possible that stricter restrictions will apply to truly serious offenders.

The greater the number of violations, the severer or longer the penalty may be, which could theoretically result in the account being completely blocked. Conversely, if a limited account accurately disseminates problematic contributions, its reach is likely to be fully restored.

In addition to reducing the natural impact of posts, their sharing may be blocked, or they may not be visible at all or they may only be moved to lower positions in the so-called News Feed.

Facebook easily has a wide range of options on how to combat misinformation. Only practice will show which procedure they will actually choose. The company does not currently provide information on how many problematic posts the user must share in order to take action against him.

New warning

In this context, another novelty is being prepared. A warning will be introduced to be displayed to users if they want to follow sites that regularly share false information. You should see a warning when you click the “Like” button.