Facebook and Twitter have teamed up with nearly 30 other companies to tackle a growing trend of "fake news" circulating on social media, the group announced Wednesday.
First Draft Coalition, a group formed in June 2015 which includes the New York Times, Washington Post, Buzzfeed News, Agence France Presse, and CNN as well as the two social media giants, said it will work together to improve the overall quality of news found on the internet.
The group announced a number of initiatives, such as creating a voluntary code of practice, promoting news literacy among social media users, and launching a platform in October that will allow members to verify questionable news stories.
The trend of fake news caught the public's attention when Facebook announced that its "trending news" feature would be decided by an algorithm instead of human editors.
Some unsubstantiated reports have still circulated, raising questions about the algorithm and the vulnerability of such programs to hoax articles posted with the intent of generating online ad revenue.
