Facebook third party fact checking partner says program needs to be extended to Instagram

Facebook needs to share more data with third-party fact checkers, according to one of the fact checking partners in the programme.

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Facebook needs to share more data with third-party fact checkers and extend the program to Instagram as well: Report (Image source: Reuters)

Facebook needs to share more data with third-party fact checkers, according to one of the fact checking partners in the programme. UK-based Full Fact, which is a third party fact checker for Facebook, has put out a detailed report with recommendations for the company’s Third Party Fact Checking programme. More importantly, it wants the programme extended to Instagram as well, which is owned by Facebook.

According to Full Fact, Facebook needs to share more data with its third party partners who are part of this fact checking exercise. “We want Facebook to share more data with fact checkers, so that we can better evaluate content we are checking and evaluate our impact,” said the report. It also wants Facebook to be “explicit about plans for machine learning.”

“We would welcome a clearer statement from Facebook of the potential avenues they see for developing machine learning tools based on the Third Party Fact Checking data. We believe that our domain expertise could help make those efforts more effective and help to avoid negative side effects or unintended consequences,”said the report.

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Full Fact was also critical of machine learning efforts to tackle fake news, adding that the technology depends on the data it learns from and that the existing ratings system is unlikely to produce a high quality outcome from machine learning.

They added that the while the programme has some encouraging signs, further development is needed to counter misinformation and the spread of fake news on the platform. Full Fact also called for a change in the current rating system for Facebook’s fact checking programme.

The report also said that for Facebook the focus seems to be on increasing scale by extending the programme to more languages and countries. Facebook also needs to scale up the volume of content and speed of response, according to the organisation.

Julia Bain of Facebook’s integrity partnerships team said the social media network was evolving its rating scale to account for different types of misinformation. “We are encouraged that many of the recommendations in the report are being actively pursued by our teams,” Bain said in a statement to Reuters.

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According to Full Fact, Facebook needs to share data shares over time for content which is flagged as fake or misleading, and that it would need to add an ‘Unsubstantiated’ rating as well to such content. Other ratings that are suggested are ‘More context needed’, a separate rating for posts that are satire or pranks. The organisation has also called on Facebook to develop its tools to better identify potentially harmful false content.

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