Instagram to fight fake news with fact-check allies

Instagram on Monday went global in its fight against misinformation, making alliances with fact-checkers around the world to expose duping in shared photos and videos.

The Facebook-owned social platform had launched a fact-checking program in the US early this year.

"Today's expansion is an important step in our ongoing efforts against misinformation on Instagram," the service said in an online post.

"Photo and video-based deception- a challenge across our industry, is increasing, with our teams focusing addressing it," the post added.

Instagram began working with third-party allies in the US to help identify, review and label bogus posts.

Content deemed to be false is ignored by Instagram's search or recommendation tools and is displayed with a warning label for the users.

"Whenever the content is termed false or partly false by a third-party fact-checker, we reduce its distribution," Instagram said.

"Additionally, it will be labelled to help people in deciding for themselves what to read, trust and share."

Once a post is found to be deceptive, the software searches for it across Instagram's platform and brands it accordingly.

"We use image-matching technology to find further instances of wrong content and apply the label, to help reduce the spread of misinformation," Instagram said.

"In addition, if something is rated false or partly false on Facebook, we'll automatically label identical content if it is posted on Instagram (and vice versa), starting today."

Instagram will also expand an anti-bullying feature developed earlier this year.

Artificial intelligence software will scan captions and comments and will then notify users if their comments could be considered offensive.

"We've found that these types of nudges can encourage people to reconsider their words," Instagram said.

Facebook already uses third-party fact-checkers in more than a dozen countries, according to its website.

Posts reviewed by Facebook fact-checking teams include content flagged by users, as well as material tagged by software that is continually being refined by the California-based media giant.