Gag Order

From Snopes.com

http://www.snopes.com/info/news/facebookhoax.asp

On 20 January 2015, Facebook issue a press release entitled "News Feed FYI: Showing Fewer Hoaxes" in which the social network announced a more direct approach to false information and users' News Feeds:

We've heard from people that they want to see fewer stories that are hoaxes, or misleading news. Today's update to News Feed reduces the distribution of posts that people have reported as hoaxes and adds an annotation to posts that have received many of these types of reports to warn others on Facebook. We are not removing stories people report as false and we are not reviewing content and making a determination on its accuracy.

The note defined what constituted a hoax for the purposes of the announcement and referenced the earlier findings about deletion of rumors and false information

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According to Facebook, more direct or humor-based satire content won't be affected by the update: "publishers who are frequently posting hoaxes and scams will see their distribution decrease," but content deemed humorous by users won't be impacted by the change. Links flagged for containing false information might be appended with a warning to users attempting to share the content.

Last updated: 20 January 2015

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/info/news/facebookhoax.asp#GFuPLrwR64Oo0Zd3.99

January 20, 2015

News Feed FYI: Showing Fewer Hoaxes

By Erich Owens, Software Engineer, and Udi Weinsberg, Research Scientist

The goal of News Feed is to catch up with your friends and find the things that matter to you. We’re always looking to people on Facebook to tell us how we can improve this experience. We’ve heard from people that they want to see fewer stories that are hoaxes, or misleading news. Today’s update to News Feed reduces the distribution of posts that people have reported as hoaxes and adds an annotation to posts that have received many of these types of reports to warn others on Facebook. We are not removing stories people report as false and we are not reviewing content and making a determination on its accuracy.

http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2015/01/news-feed-fyi-showing-fewer-hoaxes/