To curb increasing rise of fake news in the social media space, Facebook has a announced partnership with Nigerian fact-checking organisation, Dubawa, part of a global network of fact-checking organisations, certified by the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network – Poynter.

This partnership would help to assess the accuracy of news and reduce the spread of misinformation. Facebook’s fact-checking programme aims to improve the quality of news people find on its platform. This follows the recent launch of its Third-Party Fact-Checking programme in partnership with Africa Check and AFP.

Facebook’s fact-checking programme relies on feedback from the Facebook community, along with many other signals Facebook uses to raise potentially false stories to fact checkers for review.

Local articles would be fact-checked alongside the verification of photos and videos, and if a fact checking agency identifies a story as fake, Facebook would show it lower in News Feed, significantly reducing its distribution.

Adaora Ikenze, Head of Public Policy for West and Central Africa, Facebook said, “This new partnership with Dubawa further highlights our commitment in tackling misinformation and false news across Nigeria, and builds on the already important work that AFP and Africa Check have begun. We know that Third-Party Fact-Checking alone is not the solution, it is one of many initiatives and programmes we continue to invest in across the country to help to improve the quality of information people see on Facebook.”

When third-party fact-checkers write articles about a news story, Facebook would show these in Related Articles immediately below the story in News Feed. Page Admins and people on Facebook would 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.