Facebook has unveiled a series of measures including a collaboration with an independent fact-checker designed to hinder the spread of fake news stories through its platform.

The social media giant has been heavily criticised after it emerged that misinformation was being widely shared by users and being promoted on people's news feeds.

Under the new measures Facebook users will be able to flag up stories they believe are hoaxes which will then be sent to "third-party fact checking organisations" for review.

If the fact-checkers agree that it a story untrue then an alert will appear underneath it warning that its claims are disputed.

False stories could also be bumped further down newsfeeds and cannot be made into an advert or promoted, Facebook said.

But users will still have the ability to share such stories to their online friends.

It comes after Facebook and other major web companies faced a storm of criticism over their inaction on fake news stories.

Many believe that the prevalence of both mistaken reports and deliberate misinformation on major web platforms are having a serious consequence on people's understanding of world events.

Some say Donald Trump won the US election thanks to fake news smearing Hillary Clinton. Credit: Reuters

Some critics say that fake stories smearing Hillary Clinton helped spur Donald Trump to victory in the US presidential elections.

Vice president of Facebook's News Feed Adam Mosseri said they were taking a "careful" approach to the issue as they did not want to encroach on people's ability to express themselves.

We've focused our efforts on the worst of the worst, on the clear hoaxes spread by spammers for their own gain, and on engaging both our community and third party organisations. Adam Mosseri

Mr Mosseri said the rise of bogus stories could be blamed in part on financial motivations - as spammers can profit from advert revenues by luring social media users in with scandalous, but inaccurate, headlines.

"It's important to us that the stories you see on Facebook are authentic and meaningful," he said.

"We're excited about this progress, but we know there's more to be done. We're going to keep working on this problem for as long as it takes to get it right."