Here's a way Facebook is actually fighting fake news

Facebook is cutting down on misinformation- AKA fake news-shared on the world's largest social network.

A new tweak to its API (a fancy acronym for shared code) will prevent Facebook users from changing the headline, description, and image that is shared when posting a link, Facebook revealed in a post on its developers blog.

That means Facebook users can no longer post an article titled "Here's a way Facebook is actually fighting fake news" and change the headline to "Here's a way Twitter is not fighting real news" in order to try to get more clicks.

It's a clear effort to rule out bad actors, who change headlines to trick people and spread misinformation.

"Allowing modification of link headlines and images when sharing posts has provided a potential vehicle for malicious users to misrepresent underlying link content, and hence Facebook is removing the capability," a member of the Facebook marketing partner team told the Social News Desk. The company sent a similar statement to Mashable.

But it is an unfortunate change for many publishers who currently experiment with different headlines and images as a way to attract different audiences on Facebook. Not every publisher was changing the text or image with malicious intent.

With the conversation of fake news and Facebook admitting it needs to make changes, it appears that that time has come to an end.

As Social News Desk put it, "This is why we can't have nice things." Thanks, Mark.

Read the full article here.