Facebook fake news features will also be available in Germany

Germany has taken a tough stance in the battle against fake news and now it's about to become the first country outside of the U.S. to get Facebook's new tools help combat the problem.

It comes after German officials threatened to fine the social media platform for every fake story that populated the newsfeed as it goes against the country's strict defamation laws.

The tools -- including an option for users to flag fake news and third party fact-checking -- are similar to the ones announced by Facebook in the U.S. in December.

In a German-language statement, Facebook said German speaking users would have the option to flag potentially false stories by clicking on the top right corner of a post and label it as "fake news".

Staff at the social networking company will then review the messages and work with the nonprofit fact-checking organisation Correctiv to investigate the post.

If found unreliable, the story will be marked as "disputed" and appear lower in the feeds.

"Last month we announced measures to tackle the challenge of fake news on Facebook," Facebook said. "In the coming weeks we will introduce these updates in Germany."

Correctiv is one of the nonprofit partners working with Facebook to verify news on the platform.

The fact-checkers, currently around 43, must sign up to Poynter's International Fact Checking Code of Principles to take part.

Facebook also aims to disrupt financial payments and penalise websites which create fake news websites with the purpose of earning money from ad revenue.