The social network will make use of a new and improved machine learning algorithm as its first line of defence, capable of flagging up articles which bear all the hallmarks of being agenda driven to be reviewed further by human fact checkers.
This extra context will be displayed in the form of links to other articles discussing or debunking a topic, to appear below a link to a suspicious news story. This will help the site detect possible hoaxes and send them to fact checkers before the potentially untrue stories go viral.
Facebook on Thursday began offering additional links to news stories as another method to help users discern false news and misinformation. So we're rolling this out more broadly.
Facebook has been criticized as being one of the main distribution points for so-called fake news, which many think influenced the 2016 USA presidential election.
On Thursday Facebook said in a separate statement in German that a test of the new fact-checking feature was being launched in the United States, France, the Netherlands and Germany.
Facebook continues to take fresh steps to combat false information across its app. Earlier this year, Facebook added articles in this section that provided people easier access to additional perspectives and information, including articles by third-party fact checkers.
In the months since the election, Trump has used the "fake news" term to refer to the mainstream media.