News aggregator Flipboard has a plan to tackle ‘fake news’

Flipboard 4.0 focuses on “Smart Magazines” with heavily customized content. Source: Flipboard

Flipboard on Wednesday announced a major update to its news-aggregating app that targets fake news and emphasizes different views from across the political spectrum — ongoing hot-button topics following last year’s US presidential election.

The app update, available for iOS, Android and the web, sports a new, minimalistic layout throughout that now focuses on content that’s heavily personalized for each user by way of what the startup calls “Smart Magazines.” Each Smart Magazine is essentially a digital collection of up-to-date stories pulled from different news sources in a larger theme of your choosing, like sports, politics or celebrity news. It’s also possible to fine tune Smart Magazines’ content to pick and choose from thousands of topics, like say, a technology-themed Smart Magazine that focused on venture capital-backed startups.

But perhaps Flipboard’s two most interesting features have to do with how your news can be curated — two features which were somewhat downplayed when Flipboard previewed the update for Yahoo Finance.

Many Americans complained they were blindsided by November’s presidential election results thanks in part to sources like Facebook (JP Mangalindan is a senior correspondent covering the intersection of business and technology.