According to Facebook, the feature enables administrators of groups to immediately remove both fresh postings that have been flagged as containing inaccurate material and older statements that have since been proven false.
owned by meta Facebook releases a technology that allows group administrators to automatically weed out assertions that have been refuted since they were posted.
Before the US midterm elections and as Facebook-parent Meta continues to fend off critics who claim it does not do enough to combat disinformation on its services, group admins now have the option to submit false information to a “quarantine queue.”
According to Facebook, the feature enables administrators of groups to immediately remove both fresh postings that have been flagged as containing inaccurate material and older statements that have since been proven false.
“Group admins can automatically transfer posts containing material assessed as false by third-party fact-checkers to pending postings so that the admins can evaluate the posts before deleting them,” said Tom Alison, head of Facebook. “This helps ensure content is more credible for the broader community.”
Aiming at a section of the vast network that has aroused particular worry from misinformation watch dogs, Facebook started letting groups automatically reject new posts tagged as containing incorrect information earlier in March.
Facebook Groups, which enable members to congregate around subjects ranging from parenting to politics, are used by more than 1.8 billion people each month.
However, detractors claim that because the groups may draw sizable crowds of people who share their opinions and are gathered around a certain subject, they are ripe for the dissemination of incorrect or misleading information.
The misinformation-sifting tool was one of the improvements made to help administrators manage groups more easily.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, wrote in a post that “about 100 million new group memberships are added to Facebook every day, which is kind of astounding,” and he pledged to continue developing new capabilities for “ever deeper connections around common interests.”
According to Alison, Meta’s vision of the future, in which online activity takes place in virtual environments known as the metaverse, includes the evolution of groups.
“Technology is developing quickly. More specifically, we’re developing it, making investments in services and research that will contribute to the reality of the metaverse, “Adds Alison.
