Giant Internet firms Facebook and Google joined forces with news organizations on Monday to launch new fact-checking tools designed to root out “fake news” stories in France ahead of the country’s presidential election.
Social networks and news aggregators came under fire during the U.S. presidential vote when it became clear they had inadvertently fanned false news reports.
Facebook , said it would work with eight French news organizations, including news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), news channel BFM TV, and newspapers L’Express and Le Monde to minimize the risk that false news appeared on its platform.
Facebook, the world’s biggest social network, has 24 million users in France, more than a third of the country’s population. It will rely on users to flag fake news on its network so that the articles can then by fact-checked by its partner organizations.
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