Facebook says that actual facts are alternatives to alternative facts

Facebook is to step up its efforts to fight fake news by sending more suspected hoax stories to fact-checkers and publishing their findings online. It follows mounting criticism of the social media firm for not doing enough to root out fake news on its platform.

It has also just launched a new feature in four countries that will publish alternative news links beneath problematic articles. But several experts said the measures did not do go far enough. "Presenting audiences with context is helpful," said Tom Felle, a senior lecturer in digital journalism at City University. "But it does nothing to stop the spread of this material, or to stop traffic going to fake news peddlers who are making money out of creating this material."

On Thursday, however, the firm said it would start using "updated machine learning" to enhance detection. "If an article has been reviewed by fact checkers, we may show the fact-checking stories below the original post," added Sara Su, product manager of News Feed, in a blog. A spokesman later clarified that these stories would not be "direct responses" to fake articles, but factually accurate reports that offered an alternative.

HAH ! So the real facts have become themselves the alternatives. This sounds next to useless. I've a better idea. Whenever a story has been identified as potentially fake, present it along with a selection of actual proper factual articles (relating to the same subject) all displayed at the same font size, in a randomised order.
A future upgrade will present the user who clicks on the fake news story with an enormous, highly obnoxious pop-up full of gifs warning them that they're about to have their brain melted and that if they click this link they'll weaken their immune system and become less attractive to the opposite sex.
The next upgrade will replace the popup with a two hour video lecture on critical thinking and will include a randomised test at the end to ensure they actually watched it.
An additional upgrade will do exactly what it should be doing in the first place and take the damn things down.

I don't believe it's that hard to spot this stuff - at least, not the worst of it. Only excessive amounts of bullshitting has persuaded us that removing stories about Clinton being a murderer or the world being 6,000 years old is in some way a bad thing. It isn't. It's a wholly rational, sensible thing.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40812697