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Facebook Trust Indicators tool hoists red flags to help you spot fake news

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Facebook’s fight against fake news is marching on with new tools to help users determine which articles come from a trustworthy source. On Thursday, November 18, Facebook launched Trust Indicators, a tool to help users determine how each particular publication works. The tool comes the day after Facebook launched new video tools for publishers.

Facebook Trust Indicators are a set of details about a journalistic organization that can help users better understand that particular publication. For example, one of those indicators is ownership structure, informing readers of who owns that publication, a potential red flag for when that publication covers topics or companies related to that ownership structure.

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The Trust Indicators also include links to the publication’s ethics policy, corrections policy, and fact-checking policy. News organizations can also upload their masthead. The different indicators were selected by the Trust Project, a group of collaborating news organizations and publishers.

The new feature expands Facebook’s new tools that help users see where an article is coming from. The indicators are part of the details readers can find by accessing the “About This Article” or “i” section, which also includes a description of the company and information about the author.

“We believe that helping people access this important contextual information can help them evaluate if articles are from a publisher they trust, and if the story itself is credible,” Facebook Product Manager Andrew Anker wrote in the announcement. “This step is part of our larger efforts to combat false news and misinformation on Facebook — providing people with more context to help them make more informed decisions, advance news literacy and education, and working to reinforce indicators of publisher integrity on our platform.”

The feature launched on November 16 with a small group of publishers and Facebook says the tool will see a wider rollout over the next few months.

The Trust Indicators come after Facebook announced new video tools on Wednesday, November 15. Highlighted Shares, available for Pages, will show the shares that resulted in the most views. The tool helps Page administrators see a more detailed breakdown of where the views and engagement from their videos are coming from.

The Highlighted Shares is a response to requests from video publishers to have access to more data about how viewers are interacting with the video, Facebook says.

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