Facebook brings new Wikipedia-powered tool to fight fake news

Facebook is using the crowdsourced Wikipedia for its newly launched tools that will help its users to access news in a better way. The company recently rolled out a new 'About this Article' tool for the US market after releasing tests in 2017.

A pop-up will show details about the source of the article when tapped on the 'i' icon. The section then directs the user to the publication's Wikipedia page, if there is one. Based on this information, the details are followed by related articles and also provide a map of where the article has been shared from. If the publication doesn't have a Wikipedia entry, Facebook will show that the information isn't available, which could be a red flag.

While these features were seen on the early tests as well, the company aims to expand the data in the first rollout. The new tool can also display more articles from the same publication while another section will notify the users of which of their friends have shared the content. Facebook is also testing additional features that will enable users to see not just the articles but the author's Wikipedia pages (if they have one) as well. It will also display other articles by the same author. Though, the feature will only work for authors using FAcebook's author tags to show the byline with the link preview.

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The social media giant said that the new tool was developed with the Facebook Journalism Project and that it's continuously looking for more ways to add new context to news sources.

This isn't the first time a social media company has turned to Wikipedia for offering more details on a source. YouTube is also adding Wikipedia links to the videos that are connected to a known list of conspiracy theories. Wikipedia is responsible for creating that list as well.

Besides, Facebook also announced it will be shutting down its Partner Categories marketing product as the outcry over the recent data scandal swirls. The social media giant made the announcement in a post on the newsroom page, where it claims the move would "help improve people's privacy."

The Partner Categories platform is powered by third-party data providers such as Epsilon, Acxiom, Experian, and helps the clients to target Facebook users for the promotion of their products.