Last week my Facebook page got spammed. It was my own fault; I clicked on one of those viral hoax videos that are doing the rounds on the social media site. Looking back, I was perhaps a bit naive to believe that a fisherman was swallowed whole by a shark and that the entire thing was captured on video. There has been a marked increase in these hoax videos (which often contain malware) on Facebook news feeds, and now Facebook is cracking down, reports the Guardian. Facebook software engineer Udi Weinsberg has announced changes to how Facebook’s News Feed handles content. “Today’s update to News Feed reduces the distribution of posts that people have reported as hoaxes and adds an annotation to posts that have received many of these types of reports to warn others on Facebook.”
The good news, though, is that if you like satire pages like The Onion or Waterford Whispers News, “we’ve found from testing that people tend not to report satirical content intended to be humorous, or content that is clearly labeled as satire.” The Guardian also points out that Facebook is concerned about its liability in allowing hoaxes and click-bait on its site. “One thing Facebook is being very clear on is its determination to still be seen as a platform, not a publisher – an important legal point in terms of its responsibility for the material published on the social network.”