Following the recent launch of its Third-Party Fact-Checking programme in partnership with Africa Check and AFP, Facebook has announced its third partner, Nigerian fact-checking organisation Dubawa, part of a global network of fact-checking organisations, certified by the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network – Poynter.
Helping to assess the accuracy of news and reduce the spread of misinformation, Facebook’s fact-checking programme aims to improve the quality of news people find on its platform.
Facebook’s fact-checking programme relies on feedback from the Facebook community, along with many other signals Facebook uses to raise potentially false stories to fact checkers for review.
Local articles will be fact-checked alongside the verification of photos and videos, and if a fact checking agency identifies a story as fake, Facebook will show it lower in News Feed, significantly reducing its distribution.
Adaora Ikenze, Head of Public Policy for West and Central Africa commented: “This new partnership with Dubawa further highlights our commitment in tackling misinformation and false news across Nigeria, and builds on the already important work that AFP and Africa Check have begun.
We know that Third-Party Fact-Checking alone is not the solution, it is one of many initiatives and programmes we continue to invest in across the country to help to improve the quality of information people see on Facebook.”
When third-party fact-checkers write articles about a news story, Facebook will show these in Related Articles immediately below the story in News Feed.
Page Admins and people on Facebook will also receive notifications if they try to share a story or have shared one in the past that’s been determined to be false, empowering people to decide for themselves what to read, trust, and share.
Commenting on the partnership, Ebele Oputa, Project Officer and Editor, Dubawa said: “The danger of fake news, mis-information, dis-information, in whatever form, is ever more real and vivid in today’s world. In recent years, we’ve seen democracies all over the world, being threatened by the spread of false news which plays to the fears and prejudices of people.
“As a fact-checking organization in Nigeria, we try as much as we can to fight this via our articles, tweets and trainings, but we also understand the role that technology plays in getting the right information to the public. As such, our partnership with Facebook is very pivotal in ensuring that factual information gets to the people who earnestly need it to make right decisions.”