Users to receive alert message from FB if they are interacting with falsity

Facebook will now send you a pop-up notification if you hit Like or Interact on pages that share misinformation that is flagged by the company's fact-checking partners.

The social media giant on Wednesday announced the new update in an attempt to curb the spread of misinformation which has been of serious concern especially since the pandemic began. The company has also announced that "stronger" action will be taken against people who repeatedly share misinformation on the platform.

Facebook also said that it will reduce the distribution of all posts in its news feed from a user account if it frequently shares content that has been flagged by its fact-checking partners.

"Whether it's false or misleading content about COVID-19 and vaccines, climate change, elections, or other topics, we're making sure fewer people see misinformation on our apps," Facebook said in a blog post.

The new update is said to make it easier for anyone to identify that the information could be unreliable. Also, Facebook says it wants to provide helpful information with a pop-up to users before they hit 'Like' on a page that has repeatedly shared content that fact-checkers have rated.

The notification will include the fact-checkers' articles with corrected facts debunking the claims made in the other article with a prompt to share the right article with their connections. It also includes a notification alerting users who share false information may have their posts ranked lower in News Feed so that it's not seen by a large number of people.

Furthermore, Facebook will now allow users on its platform as well as those on Instagram to hide their public 'like' counts as part of the company's efforts to give people control over their experience. Users will be able to hide 'like' counts on others' posts by visiting the new posts section in settings.