Guess what! Some random person is going to share their lottery winnings with you! And Facebook is going to start charging for access. And, holy crap! Some lady tattooed all of her Facebook friends on her arm.
What do all of these outlandish statements have in common? They're all hoaxes that have circulated on Facebook at some point. We've all seen them before — stories in our news feeds that are obviously bogus.
Fortunately, you should now start seeing a lot less of them. Facebook on Tuesday announced it has rolled out an update to News Feed that "reduces the distribution of posts that people have reported as hoaxes." As part of the effort to crack down on phony stories, Facebook is also adding an annotation to posts that have been flagged many times as a hoax.
"This means a post with a link to an article that many people have reported as a hoax or chosen to delete will get reduced distribution in News Feed," Facebook said. This will apply to posts containing links, photos, videos, and status updates.
When you do see a potentially phony story, it'll have a little gray warning at the top stating: "Many people on Facebook have reported that this story contains false information."
The social network said it will not, however, remove stories people report as false, nor will it review any content to make a determination about its accuracy.
The move comes after Facebook recently added an option for people to report a story they see in News Feed as false. This new option works the same way as reporting a story as spam — when you click to hide a story, you have the option to report its content.
In other Facebook news, Reuters over the weekend reported that the social network is on a hiring spree, aiming to add nearly 1,200 new employees to bolster its virtual reality efforts following last year's $2 billion Oculus acquisition.