Taking another step towards limiting fake and viral news, Facebook has announced advanced identity verification of profiles. As announced, Facebook will make identity verification necessary for profiles whose posts quickly go viral.
Facebook Identity Verification Of High-Reach Profiles
In a recent post, Facebook has announced mandatory identity verification of profiles with a larger audience. In other words, all users behind high-reach profiles have to verify their identities to continue making their posts viral.
As announced, the process that started with Page Admin profiles now extends to the profiles having more US audience.
In 2018, we started to verify the identity of people managing Pages with large audiences, and now we’re extending ID verification to some profiles with large audiences in the US
Whereas, in the days to come, this verification will extend to include profiles generating viral content. Also, it will apply to the accounts with inauthentic behavior.
Moving forward, we will verify the identity of people who have a pattern of inauthentic behavior on Facebook and whose posts start to rapidly go viral in the US.”
Facebook’s Effort To Fight Fake News
According to Anita Joseph and Michele Paselli, Product Managers at Facebook, the tech giant has taken this step to ensure better user experience. They believe that the users should know the people behind the posts that go quickly spread, or simply, ‘go viral’.
Certainly, keeping in view the dissemination of fake news on social media, such steps seem necessary. Earlier, Facebook also implemented measures to curb the spread of fake news regarding COVID-19.
We want to ensure the content you see on Facebook is authentic and comes from real people, not bots or others trying to conceal their identity.
Hence, if the user prefers not to undergo ID verification, Facebook will reduce the visibility of the posts.
If someone chooses not to verify their identity or the ID provided does not match the linked Facebook account, the distribution of their viral post will remain reduced so fewer people will see it.
Whereas, this identity verification continues to remain mandatory for Page Admins as well.
Users can visit Facebook’s Help Center to know what documents should they provide for ID verification.