In the quest to weed out fake news on social media, Facebook has decided to use a new mechanism to verify the authenticity of photos and videos in 17 countries.
In a blog post, Product Manager Antonia Woodford said Facebook has built a machine-learning model that flags possibly false content for fact-checkers to look at.
All of the company's 27 fact-checking partners in the countries, including the US, will now be increasing the scope of what they look at, she explained.
"Many of our third-party fact-checking partners have expertise evaluating photos and videos and are trained in visual verification techniques, such as reverse image searching and analyzing image metadata, like when and where the photo or video was taken," Woodford said.
According to the CNET.com, social media giants like Facebook and Twitter are facing increasing calls to address how their networks can be used to spread fake news and misinformation and even influence elections.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg went to Capitol Hill along with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to answer questions from lawmakers during a Senate intelligence committee hearing.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company has learned a lot since Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and that it "developed sophisticated systems that combine technology and people to prevent election interference on our services."
