Internet companies like Facebook and Google have been slammed for allowing "fake news" on their platforms and not dealing with it fast enough. Both firms have introduced steps to improve such as a "fact check" feature on Google search, while Facebook released a post about how to spot false articles.

Facebook said it is working on a number of areas to tackle fake news. One of those is trying to move financial incentive for fake news posters, by making it difficult for such people to buy ads on the platform, and updating detection of fake accounts. The social networking giant also made updates in May so people see fewer posts and ads in their News Feed that link to low-quality web page experiences.

The U.S. firm also said it's looking into ways to improve ranking of news articles.

"We've found opportunities like the fact that if reading an article makes people significantly less likely to share it, that may be a sign that a story has misled people in some way. We're continuing to test this signal and others in News Feed ranking in order to reduce the prevalence of false news content," Facebook said in a blog post earlier this year.

Facebook also received criticism about allowing fake news on the platform during the U.S. election last year. To address the issue, the company launched a product called "Perspectives" for the recent U.K. elections, which allowed users to compare different political parties' policies on the same issue.

Wales recently launched a new venture called Wikitribune, a news site that is going to focus on "evidence-based journalism". Wikitribune is asking for donations to pay for 10 journalists and Wales is currently hiring his team.



Wales told CNBC in May that Facebook was taking the issue of fake news seriously and is taking the right steps to address the problem. But if consumers felt they were being fed wrong information, then they could turn away from the platform.



"Consumers need to hold their (Facebook's) feet to the fire and say, 'you really need to take a look at this stuff because I don't want to be tricked by fake information'," Wales told CNBC in a TV interview.

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