Facebook moves to rate users on trustworthiness -report

WASHINGTON: Facebook Inc has started scoring its users based on their trustworthiness in an attempt to fight misinformation, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, citing a company executive.

The social media giant developed the rating system over the past year, the newspaper reported, citing an interview with Facebook product manager Tessa Lyons, who is tasked with the company´s efforts to identify malicious actors.

The company tries that the user doesn’t find out when the rating is going on, which is why it only runs in the background, ranking users from zero to one, the source adds.

The site filters a profile by triggering an  array of information, one being through facts-checking, to decide whether the user should be believed when it reports something on the site that may appear wrong.

Facebook has not listed what markers it counters to rank the user's reputation, if revealed, its algorithms may be gamed.

 However,  the  company's manager has  hinted at some measures a user can refrain from to avoid a bad reputation.

“One of the signals we use is how people interact with articles,” Lyons told the Washington Post. “For example, if someone previously gave us feedback that an article was false and the article was confirmed false by a fact-checker, then we might weight that person’s future false news feedback more than someone who indiscriminately provides false news feedback on lots of articles, including ones that end up being rated as true.”