A piece of news is as good as its source. This is a fact about journalism, especially cyber news reporting. There are all sorts of news items flying around at any given time. Fake news and the trouble caused through them are in the headlines for some time now. Online giants like Google and Facebook are battling to keep a lid on the access and sharing of fake news.
Among several other steps in the recent times, Facebook is working on a method to tag news sources to the feed that shows up on your profile wall. You know the function of the ‘i’ button that you often find across social media, even on your phone call logs. This button, on being clicked, offers additional information. Facebook is working on a way to tag sources to news feed articles with the help of this ‘i’ button.
By clicking on the button beside a news story, you can find out its source. It can be Wikipedia or Facebook itself, not to mention a host of other heterogeneous sources. The function of this button is to ensure that you read or share only those stories which are from credible sources according to you. That way, you are not in a danger of sharing something fake.
Along with knowing the source, you can go to the source page and follow them. Additionally, you can check up which contacts are engaging with the content from this source. This contextual information will enable you to understand what you are reading and sharing. This is what Facebook has to say about this new function:
”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. This is just the beginning of the test.”
