Facebook takes action against false news in Kenya

We know people want to see accurate information on Facebook – and so do we. False news and misinformation are harmful to our community and make the world less informed. All of us have a responsibility to curb the spread of false news.

As part of that effort, in Kenya Facebook is rolling out an educational tool to help people spot false news on Facebook. When people click on the tool at the top of their News Feed, they will see more information and resource in the Facebook Help Center, including tips such as checking the web address, investigating the source and looking for other reports on the topic.

The tool will be available from today for a few days – in Swahili and English – and be shown to the 7million people who use Facebook on a monthly basis in Kenya. Additionally, together with Whats App, we are placing educational notices in some of Kenya’s national newspapers and radio stations with ten tips on how to spot false news.

This effort builds on our ongoing work to help our community make more informed decisions when they encounter false news and continuously improve the tools and tactics used to tackle this problem. We detailed efforts in a comprehensive blog post in April.  They include reducing financial incentives for bad actors, taking action against fake accounts, applying machine learning to help limit spam and reducing the posts people see that link to low-quality web pages.

Ebele Okobi, Director of Policy for Facebook Africa, said in a press satatement, “We take fighting fake news issues seriously, because people want to see accurate information on Facebook. We’ve developed a three-part strategy to stop the spread of misinformation: disrupting the economic incentives for the spammers who attempt to distribute false news, building new products, and helping people better identify false news and report it.”

This builds on our ongoing efforts to create a safe and respectful experience for the people who use our platform. That is why we have Community Standards that describe what is and is not allowed on Facebook and cover a wide range of topics including hate speech, incitement, violent or graphic content. We encourage people to report anything that they think violates these policies so we can review and remove inappropriate content.