Facebook will start showing fewer hoaxes on your News Feed

If you’ve been on Facebook in the past few months, you’ve likely seen a number of hoaxes or stories that give out false information to readers muddying up your News Feed. The folks at Facebook realize that it’s a problem, and they’re now aiming to reduce the number of undesirable stories you see on your feed.

If you’ve ever seen a story that would be considered a hoax, there is a way to report it by choosing the option to hide the story from your News Feed. To record misleading posts, Facebook will track stories that have been reported as spam by users. They explain in greater detail:

To reduce the number of these types of posts, News Feed will take into account when many people flag a post as false. News Feed will also take into account when many people choose to delete posts. This means a post with a link to an article that many people have reported as a hoax or chosen to delete will get reduced distribution in News Feed. This update will apply to posts including links, photos, videos and status updates.

Furthermore, posts that receive an abundance of spam reports will be flagged with a message that explains the potential invalidity of the post.

Facebook also notes that this should not affect satirical stories. So for all fans of The Onion or ClickHole, you likely won’t see a reduced amount of these stories on your News Feed.