Telling people their beliefs are wrong doesn’t work.
Facebook has been trying to combat the spread of misinformation on its platform through measures like putting a “Disputed” flag next to fake news.
The company will ditch this particular measure after finding this can actually entrench people more strongly in wrongly held beliefs.
The social media firm will stick to pointing people who read or share fake news to fact-checked, contextual articles.
Stopping people from reading fake news is proving tougher than expected, Facebook has admitted.
The company is ditching one of its original measures to tackle the spread of fake news on Facebook, which was to stick the word “disputed” next to misleading information.
But the tactic didn’t design for human pigheadedness where, when you tell someone their opinion is wrong, they simply entrench further in that opinion.
Tech: Facebook is scrapping its system of flagging fake news because it had ‘the opposite effect to what we intended’ (FB)
