BBC Homepage
  • Skip to content
  • Accessibility Help
  • Your account
  • Notifications
  • Home
  • News
  • Sport
  • Weather
  • iPlayer
  • Sounds
  • Bitesize
  • CBBC
  • CBeebies
  • Food
  • More menu
More menu
Search BBC
  • Home
  • News
  • Sport
  • Weather
  • iPlayer
  • Sounds
  • Bitesize
  • CBBC
  • CBeebies
  • Food
Close menu
BBC News
Menu
  • Home
  • InDepth
  • Israel-Gaza war
  • War in Ukraine
  • Climate
  • UK
  • World
  • Business
  • Politics
  • Culture
More
  • Tech
  • Science
  • Health
  • Family & Education
  • In Pictures
  • Newsbeat
  • BBC Verify
  • Disability
  • BBC Trending

Solutions that can stop fake news spreading

  • Published
    30 January 2017
Share page
About sharing
Tablet computer with GoogleImage source, iStock
ByMike Wendling
BBC World Hacks

There may be actual solutions to the spread of fake news.

Fake news - from false celebrity gossip to the fabricated story of Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump - became a huge issue during the US election campaign. Those who peddled falsehoods were motivated sometimes by profit and sometimes by politics.

British parliamentarians are launching a committee to look at the problem. But globally, there are various methods being offered to fix it.

The team behind BBC World Hacks - our news solutions-focussed journalism unit - has been looking into some of the most promising potential solutions.

Humans check the most suspect stories

Facebook, which came under heavy criticism for allowing fake news to be circulated during the election period, have taken steps to offer combat the issue.

One of those steps is the enlisting of the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), a branch of the Florida-based journalism think tank Poynter, external. Facebook users in the US and Germany can now flag articles they think are deliberately false, these will then go to third-party fact checkers signed up with the IFCN.

Those fact checkers come from media organisations like the Washington Post and websites such as the urban legend debunking site Snopes.com, external.

The third-party fact checkers, says IFCN director Alexios Mantzarlis "look at the stories that users have flagged as fake and if they fact check them and tag them as false, these stories then get a disputed tag that stays with them across the social network."

Another warning appears if users try to share the story, although Facebook doesn't prevent such sharing or delete the fake news story. The "fake" tag will however negatively impact the story's score in Facebook's algorithm, meaning that fewer people will see it pop up in their news feeds.

Mantzarlis says there is as of yet no firm evidence that this actually stops fake news spreading on a large scale, and there are questions over how sustainable the programme might be. Facebook is not paying the IFCN members to provide fact-checking services. There's also nothing stopping the fake news from being posted and spread in the first place - and perhaps quite widely before being tagged.

"There is a lag, so until and unless a story is flagged as false that story does continue to spread on the social network," says Mantzarlis.

A screenshot of how Facebook's fact-checking system appears to users in the US and GermanyImage source, Facebook
Image caption,

A screenshot of how Facebook's fact-checking system appears to users in the US and Germany

Humans flag whole sites as fakes

In 2009, Le Monde, external, one of the biggest French newspapers, set up a fact-checking unit called Les Decodeurs, external (The Decoders). Increasingly the unit is turning its attention to fake news, and they've devised a web extension called Decodex.

"You just put it on your browser and then when you come to a fake news site you get a pop up appearing saying 'warning this is a fake news site'," says Samuel Laurent, editor of Les Decodeurs. "If you click on the tool you will have access to a little paper describing the website and saying why we think it's not trustworthy."

The extension is linked to a database that Les Decodeurs has compiled which ranks sites as "fake", "real" or "satire".

But there are several hurdles which likely prevent a relatively simple piece of software from being the silver bullet for fake news. Users firstly have to be aware of the problem of false stories. They have to know about the extension and be concerned enough to download it. And they have to trust Le Monde journalists and the paper's centre-left perspective.

"We know that we won't convince everyone and we know that fake news readers already think we are the fake news," Laurent says. "Our goal is to just provide this tool for people who are really sceptical or who just don't know who to trust.

"People who have already fallen into the fake news vortex, it's too late for them."

Use algorithms to fight algorithms

Algorithms are part of what spreads fake news - because juicy yet false stories which become popular can be pushed out to new eyeballs by the software that runs social networks. But some programmers think computer code could also be part of the solution.

"From an algorithmic perspective it's possible for social media sites to recognise that website was only created two weeks ago, therefore it's probably likely that this is a less trustworthy site," says Claire Wardle of journalism non-profit First Draft News.

First Draft, external is working with Google and Facebook to explore whether they could incorporate code to stop the spread of fake news. Wardle is adamant that tweaking algorithms is not like censorship.

"I'm talking about a bit like a spam folder in your email, those emails still sit there, but you have to go to your spam folder to look for it," she says.

But human language and news stories are complicated in ways that computers have difficulty dealing with, and any automated method of fact checking risks reflecting the biases of the programmers who created it.

"There are some very smart people looking at automated solutions now, around automated fact checking, which can get up to about 80% accurate," Wardle says. "I would argue we are always going to need human eyes at the very end to say 'hang on, have we got entirely duped'… we want a combination of algorithms and human experience."

line

More on this story

Hear the full story on World Hacks, from the BBC World Service.

Don't miss BBC Trending's story The rise and rise of fake news

'Pizzagate': The fake story that shows how conspiracy theories spread

Facebook, news and the meaning of truth

'Why I write fake news stories'

line
A completely made-up story about Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump was one of the most widely shared pieces of fake news during the US electionImage source, WTOE5NEWS.COM
Image caption,

A completely made-up story about Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump was one of the most widely shared pieces of fake news during the US election

Teach people how to spot fake news themselves

The previous solutions are technical fixes, but Bill Dodd has taken a different tack. His proposal would incorporate digital literacy into school curriculums.

"We already have a curriculum right now that teaches critical thinking skills but it hasn't kept up with the digital age," says Dodd, a Democratic lawmakers who has introduced a bill in the California state senate.

Senator Dodd admits not all the detail has yet been worked out, and it it would be the job of the California Board of Education to update the curriculum, but he has some of what might be included, including "trying to discern what the reputation of different sources are.

"If you are dealing with the BBC or the New York Times, chances are you don't have to go any further, but if you are dealing with some unnamed source, you are going to have to go in a little deeper to determine whether or not that's fact or fiction," he says.

And of course, his solution would take years to implement, and would apply to just one state in one country.

"There's so much news coming at kids, and many adults have this as well, but you got to start somewhere," Dodd says.

line

More from BBC Trending

Visit the Trending Facebook page, external

line

Stop the creation of fake news in the first place

During the US election, many fake news stories were written not by politically motivated Donald Trump supporters, but by people looking to make some quick cash. And so one way to stop such output would be to eliminate the financial incentives that make fake news profitable.

"To make any decent money, and a lot of the fake news sites do make decent money, you need to start serving millions of ads," says Cliff Lampe, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, "which is why the viral content market has been so important over the last few years."

In November, Google and Facebook announced moves to restrict advertisements on fake news stories, external.

But fake news producers, like others making content designed to go viral, are quick to adapt to platform rule changes.

"I think this will work for the moment, but I believe that people are going to be able to come up with a workaround and be able to manipulate that attention market in the future," Lampe says.

In addition to removing the carrot, there's some big sticks being considered. In Germany, for instance, lawmakers are even proposing criminalising people who post fake news, external.

Reporting by Harriet Noble and Charlotte Prichard

Blog by Mike Wendling, external

You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending, external, and find us on Facebook, external. All our stories are at bbc.com/trending.

More on this story

  • Revenge porn victims 'as young as 11'

    • Published
      27 April 2016
    computer

Top stories

  • Live. 

    Trump says Israel and Hamas 'both sign off' on first phase of Gaza peace plan

    • 4993 viewing5k viewing
  • 'Half my mind is still in Gaza': Evacuated teacher begins studies in UK

    • Published
      2 hours ago
  • America's top banker sounds warning on US stock market fall

    • Published
      2 hours ago

More to explore

  • 'Half my mind is still in Gaza': Evacuated teacher begins studies in UK

    Sana el-Azab is sitting on a wall circling Durham Cathedral. She is smiling and is doing a peace sign with her hands.
  • 'I'll axe stamp duty' and 'My Maddie hoax agony'

    Newspaper headlines: Tories vow to scrap stamp duty and Madeline McCann's parents give testimony in alleged stalking case
  • 'I cried every day': Victoria Beckham tells of fashion woes in new Netflix doc

    Victoria Beckham in a green dress
  • Stars, secrets and slip-ups: Celebrity Traitors is off to a cracking start

    Alan Carr and Claudia Winkleman on the Celebrity Traitors
  • How Britain's membership of the ECHR became a political hot potato

    Montage image showing Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch and Sir Keir Starmer
  • The battle for Scotland's flag: Why the right has adopted the saltire

    A man raises his fist while standing in front of a group of people waving flags, including saltires and a union flag.
  • Have Russians set up a military base in my childhood home?

    Satellite image shows evidence of Russians using a BBC reporter's childhood home in southern Zaporizhzhia oblast
  • Badenoch hopes to grab attention with policy blitz

    Leader of the Conservative Party Kemi Badenoch waves at supporters as she arrives at the annual Conservative Party Conference on October 4, 2025 in Manchester, England.
  • The Upbeat newsletter: Start your week on a high with uplifting stories delivered to your inbox

    A graphic of a wave in the colours of yellow, amber and orange against a pink sky
loading elsewhere stories

Most read

  1. 1

    America's top banker sounds warning on US stock market fall

  2. 2

    Have Russians set up a military base in my childhood home?

  3. 3

    'I'll axe stamp duty' and 'My Maddie hoax agony'

  4. 4

    ChatGPT image snares suspect in deadly Pacific Palisades fire

  5. 5

    Stars, secrets and slip-ups: Celebrity Traitors is off to a cracking start

  6. 6

    'Half my mind is still in Gaza': Evacuated teacher begins studies in UK

  7. 7

    'I cried every day': Victoria Beckham tells of fashion woes in new Netflix doc

  8. 8

    McCann stalker contacted Maddie's sister, court told

  9. 9

    How Britain's membership of the ECHR became a political hot potato

  10. 10

    Conservatives would scrap stamp duty, Badenoch announces

BBC News Services

  • On your mobile
  • On smart speakers
  • Get news alerts
  • Contact BBC News

Best of the BBC

  • Rom-com starring Aimee Lou Wood and Nabhaan Rizwan

    • Attribution
      iPlayer

    Added to Watchlist
    Film Club has been added to your iPlayer Watchlist.
    Film Club
  • Exposing a pro-Russian fake news operation

    • Attribution
      iPlayer

    Added to Watchlist
    Global Eye has been added to your iPlayer Watchlist.
    Global Eye: Inside a Pro-Russian Fake News Operation
  • Leonardo DiCaprio discusses his new film

    • Attribution
      iPlayer

    Added to Watchlist
    Movies With Ali Plumb has been added to your iPlayer Watchlist.
    Movies With Ali Plumb: Leonardo DiCaprio in Conversation
  • The rise and downfall of Margaret Thatcher

    • Attribution
      iPlayer

    Added to Watchlist
    Thatcher: A Very British Revolution has been added to your iPlayer Watchlist.
    Thatcher: A Very British Revolution
  • Home
  • News
  • Sport
  • Weather
  • iPlayer
  • Sounds
  • Bitesize
  • CBBC
  • CBeebies
  • Food
  • Terms of Use
  • About the BBC
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookies
  • Accessibility Help
  • Parental Guidance
  • Contact the BBC
  • Make an editorial complaint
  • BBC emails for you

Copyright © 2025 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.