Facebook to Pangilinan: We take misinformation seriously

Most-used social media networking site Facebook on Thursday reiterated its statement that they are taking misinformation seriously, following Senator Francis Pangilinan’s action seeking possible liabilities of social media platforms, particularly Facebook, for allowing fake news on their pages.

“We take misinformation seriously. Our goal is to connect people with the stories they find most meaningful, and we know people want accurate information,” Facebook said in a statement via email.

Pangilinan has filed Senate Resolution 271 directing appropriate committees in the Senate to conduct an inquiry into the proliferation of fake news sites in social media to determine the necessity of amending Republic Act 10175, known as the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, and other pertinent laws.

It noted that Facebook, with 47 million reported active accounts in the Philippines, is considered the “most popular and highly trafficked social media networking site.”

READ: Pangilinan seeks penalty vs social media for spread of fake news

The social media site said that they have been working to combat fake news for a long time, taking them years and still have more work to do.

Facebook’s News Feed VP Adam Mosseri in December last year shared the updates and fixes that they are taking to address the proliferation of hoaxes and fake news in the site.

READ: Facebook to combat hoaxes, fake news with new upgrades

He noted that they are testing several ways to make it easier to report a hoax, and is also working closely with fact-checking organizations to verify stories that are being shared by the users. Reports from the community as well as other signals will be used to send the stories to these organizations, which will then check and flag the stories as disputed.

READ: Facebook partners with fact-checkers to eradicate fake news

Mosseri said that they are also improving Facebook’s informed sharing and disrupting financial incentives for spammers.

The problems here are “complex, both technically and philosophically,” according to Facebook.

“We believe in giving people a voice, which means erring on the side of letting people share what they want whenever possible. We need to be careful not to discourage sharing of opinions or to mistakenly restrict accurate content. We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties,” it added.