Facebook Partners Dubawa on Fact-Checking Programme
Facebook Announces Dubawa as Fact-Checking Partner
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Tuesday January 29, 2019: Following the recent launch of its Third-Party Fact-Checking programme to help assess the accuracy of news and reduce the spread of misinformation, Facebook has partnered with Nigerian fact-checking website, Dubawa.
Dubawa is an online platform which provides factual information to its readers so they can make informed decisions, whether political, economic, security or mainstream decisions, based on the truth.
Facebook’s fact-checking programme, which also improves the quality of news people find on its platform, relies on feedback from the Facebook community, as one of many signals it uses to raise potentially false stories to fact-checkers for review.
Local articles will be fact-checked alongside the verification of photos and videos. If one of our fact-checking partners identifies a story as false, Facebook will show it lower in News Feed, significantly reducing its distribution.
Akua Gyekye, Facebook Public Policy Manager, Anglophone West Africa commented: “With this new partnership, we aim to build on the work we already started in Nigeria. Nigeria is important to us and we’re committed to taking our responsibility seriously in tackling the spread of false news. Dubawa is a platform that has distinguished itself in cross-checking news stories and presenting the facts to the public, leaving them to draw their own conclusions. This forms part of the work we are doing, and that is why we have decided to partner with them.”
When third-party fact-checkers write articles about a news story, Facebook will show these in Related Articles immediately below the story in News Feed.
Commenting on the partnership, Dubawa’s Editor, added: “In recent times, the scourge of fake news has become a source of worry, especially in the era of politicking. It is important that we guide people on how to identify what is real and what is not by presenting available fact to them. We hope that the partnership with Facebook will further improve on the work we have been doing.”
With Facebook Thirt Party Fact-Checking Programme, Page Admins and people on Facebook will also receive notifications if they try to share a story or have shared one in the past that’s been determined to be false, empowering people to decide for themselves what to read, trust, and share.
