Facebook announced a new pilot program that will allow fact-checkers to quickly see whether a representative group of Facebook users found a claim to be corroborated or contradicted.

With the move, Facebook is trying to help fact-checkers address false content faster.

The company will partner with data company YouGov to select Facebook users who will be hired as contractors to review content flagged as potentially false through machine learning, before it is sent to Facebook's third-party fact-checking partners.

For example, if there is a post claiming that a celebrity has died and community reviewers don’t find any other sources reporting that news — or see a report that the same celebrity is performing later that day — they can flag that the claim isn’t corroborated. Fact-checkers will then see this information as they review and rate the post.

Facebook is piloting this process in the US over the coming months and will evaluate how it’s working through research, help from academics and feedback from third-party fact-checking partners.

Facebook is under pressure to police misinformation on its platform in the United States ahead of the November 2020 presidential election.