by Surabhi Nijhawan Facebook has decided to get rid of its red flags - the flags under which users could highlight disputed articles - and instead will be rolling out 'related articles' as it continues its fight against fake news. The company said, 'putting a strong image, like a red flag, next to an article may entrench deeply held beliefs – the opposite effect of what we intended'. The company said that it is adding Related Articles to add more context to existing stories and argues that their research has shown it to be a more efficient way to provide factual information. 'We’ve found that when we show Related Articles next to a false news story, it leads to fewer shares than when the Disputed Flag is shown' read the blog post. Facebook launched the dispute flags feature over a year ago. The reason it is scraped are as follows: Disputed flags could not help in understanding what was wrong with a piece of information. It was not a user-friendly feature and required extra clicks for people to understand what the fact checkers had said about the story. The function sometimes backfired. Simply marking something as 'false' did not necessarily change opinions about its accuracy. The disputed flags tools required two fact-checkers. The red flags were applied only when a minimum of two fact-checking party dismissed the information. It was problematic in countries with very few fact-checkers. Disputed flags just worked for false ratings: The fact-checkers provided ratings. For instance, 'false', 'partly false'…
