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Facebook to tell users how much Russian fake news they have been exposed to
Facebook plans to show its users if they "liked" content created by Russian-backed fake news sites during the US presidential election.
US intelligence agencies are currently investigating the impact of Russian meddling on the outcome of last year's election.
Earlier this month, Facebook revealed as many as 126 million Americans may have seen content from Russia-based agents on the site over the past two years.
The social network has announced it is developing a tool to let people see whether they followed pages made by the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency.
The agency was behind hundreds of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts and posted thousands of politically-charged messages.
Many of the pages such as Heart Of Texas, Being Patriotic and Secured Borders were designed to look like they were created by US citizens.
Russia has repeatedly denied allegations that it attempted to influence the last US presidential election, despite claims by US intelligence agencies that the state attempted to tip the election in president Donald Trump's favour.
The Facebook tool, which is due to launch in December, will allow users to see which of the posts and pages they engaged with by "liking" them between January 2015 and August 2017, when the pages were shut down.
The tool will only apply to users who followed or liked those accounts, it will not work for users who saw posts from the accounts on their feed because a friend "liked" them or who saw them via paid advertisements.
"It is important that people understand how foreign actors tried to sow division and mistrust using Facebook before and after the 2016 US election," the company said in a blog post.
"That's why, as we have discovered information, we have continually come forward to share it publicly and have provided it to congressional investigators. And it's also why we're building the tool we are announcing today."
The social media giant has been criticised for allowing propaganda and fake news to spread on the site and doing too little to remove suspicious news sites.
In November 2016, Facebook's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg dismissed the idea that fake news on the site had contributed to the US election result.
However, at a Congress hearing on November 1, a Facebook representative said: "It's a much more challenging issue to identify and notify reliably people who may have been exposed to this content on an individual basis."
Over the last few months the company has identified thousands of posts and paid advertisements placed by Russia-based operatives.