Facebook fights fake news by disabling modified links previews

Facebook has started implementing a new feature that can prevent fake news from circulating on the social media. To combat the menace of fake news, Facebook is removing the ability to modify shared link previews on Facebook. This means that non-publisher Pages will no longer be able to overwrite link metadata (i.e. headline, description, image) in the Graph API or in Page composer.

In any sample Facebook page, you'll see an article's headline in big, bold letters and the text snippet underneath it. Fake news outlets have been taking advantage of the ability to customize the story's metadata to spread misinformation. They often replace the headline, image or snippet with something controversial to get maximum likes, shares and comments. By disabling the modified links feature, Facebook can kill at least one way people use to deceive the public.

Facebook writes, “We’re first rolling this feature out to media publishers, including news, sports and entertainment Pages, because we’ve found that many of these Page types modify links to their own articles at scale. Webmasters will still be able to change the Open Graph tags on their site and articles and test them with the Open Graph Debugger to configure the default previews for their content."

Facebook is making sure that the genuine publishers don't get affected by this change. The company has added a new tab under Page Publishing Tools that they can use to apply for link ownership. The company says it is making link ownership available to the publishers first and it might eventually be offered to other types of pages.

Facebook's new feature will help in eliminating a channel that has been abused for long to post false news.