Ever reported something to Facebook? You've got a rating.

Key points: Facebook assigns users a credibility rating based on their accuracy when reporting false information

Facebook assigns users a credibility rating based on their accuracy when reporting false information The rating impacts how that user's future claims are received

The rating impacts how that user's future claims are received It's unlikely the score or the criteria used in assigning it will be known as Facebook tries to protect its algorithms from exploitation

Facebook gives users the option to flag a number of issues, including false news.

The latest move by the tech giant, revealed by the Washington Post, sees users assessed on the trustworthiness of their claims. Users are assigned a decimal rating between 0 and 1, which impacts how future claims are reviewed.

Facebook, like many others in the social media sphere, rely on users to flag problematic content, however many are reporting content they merely disagree with as untrue, flooding Facebook's fact-checking department with unfounded claims.

Tessa Lyons, the product manager who deals with misinformation at Facebook, told the Post that it's "not uncommon for people to tell us something is false simply because they disagree with the premise of a story or they're intentionally trying to target a particular publisher".

Saving fact-checkers' time

Facebook uses a third-party fact-checking department to process the claims submitted by users.

Ms Lyons told the Post that it was important for Facebook to build systems to assess whether the posts were likely to be false to make efficient use of their fact-checkers' time.

"One of the signals we use is how people interact with articles," Ms Lyons told the Post.

"For example, if someone previously gave us feedback that an article was false and the article was confirmed false by a fact-checker, then we might weigh that person's future false-news feedback more than someone who indiscriminately provides false-news feedback on lots of articles, including ones that end up being rated as true," Ms Lyons said.

The automated system then uses the credibility rating to predict which posts the fact-checking department should manually review.

Criteria likely to remain secret

The rating system is just one element of a reportedly extensive reputation criteria.

"The idea that we have a centralised 'reputation' score for people that use Facebook is just plain wrong," a spokesperson from Facebook wrote via email.

"What we're actually doing: We developed a process to protect against people indiscriminately flagging news as fake and attempting to game the system."

The specific factors that are considered when assigning users a score are likely to remain a mystery, as the tech giant attempts to develop algorithms that cannot be cheated.

It's a tricky position for a company claiming commitment to transparency.