How This Radical New Proposal Could Curb Fake News on Social Media

By BILLY PERRIGO

9:43 AM EST

An overwhelming majority of Europeans would support a radical new measure that would require social media companies to direct all users who have seen false information toward fact-checks, according to new polling from global advocacy group Avaaz. The initiative is intended to prevent the spread of “fake news” on Facebook and Twitter as governments come under growing pressure to regulate social media.

Research shared exclusively with TIME shows that 86.6% of people support Avaaz’s new proposal known as Correct the Record, which activists and politicians say could be the most effective way to stop “fake news” from spreading online.

Under the Correct the Record initiative, social media companies would have to make sure that all users who see false information on their feeds are also later presented with fact-checks — whether in the form of a notification telling them something they’ve seen may have been misleading, or a pinned post in their newsfeed with a link to a fact-check by a “verified” organization.

The proposal is one of the first concrete suggestions for how to combat the spread of disinformation online, at a time when false news is increasingly affecting the outcome of elections and fueling violence around the world.

The international activist network Avaaz, in collaboration with the polling group YouGov, surveyed more than 5,000 people in Germany, France, Spain and Italy on the subject of Correct the Record. In each country, at least 81% and as many as 92% of respondents said they either “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that social media companies should “work with independent and trusted fact checking organizations to provide all users who have been exposed to widespread false or misleading content with verified corrections.”

“Correcting the record is a legal responsibility that newspapers have to meet in many countries,” Ricken Patel, the executive director of Avaaz, tells TIME. “When they print false information, they have to print corrections. Part of Correct the Record is just bringing that journalistic tradition of correction into social media.”

European Union officials have also welcomed the Correct the Record proposal. “We need rapid corrections, which are given the same prominence and circulation as the original fake news,” said Julian King, the E.U. security commissioner, after being briefed on the proposal late last year.

http://time.com/5540995/correct-the-record-polling-fake-news/