by Gavin O’Malley @mp_gavin, October 5, 2017

Facing a barrage of criticism for assisting in the spread of fake and misleading news and information, Facebook on Thursday began testing a feature designed to give users more context on articles they see in their News Feeds.

“The new feature will give people the tools to make an informed decision about which stories to read, share and trust,” a company spokeswoman said.

“We are testing a button people can tap for additional context on an article, without needing to go to another page,” she said.

For contextual information, Facebook is relying on a range of sources, from publisher’s Wikipedia entries to trending and related articles on its own network.

“If that information is not available, we will people know, which itself can be helpful context,” the spokeswoman noted.

The test reflects feedback from Facebook’s community, including many publishers involved in the development of the Facebook Journalism Project.

As for how the test may affect publishers’ pages, Facebook doesn’t expect many to experience a significant difference in their News Feed distribution.

Threatening its position as a source of factual news and information, Facebook recently admitted that Russian agents used its network to distribute disinformation to about 10 million U.S. users. The tech giant also seems to be prepping the public and government officials for of revelations of additional breaches.

“We’re still looking for abuse and bad actors on our platform,” Elliot Schrage, vice president of policy and communications at the social giant, said in a blog post earlier this week.

Just this week, it was clear that Facebook had yet to fix its fake-news problem, as it helped circulate misinformation about the massacre in Las Vegas.

MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily

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