In a blog post published on Monday, Facebook's product manager for civic engagement, Samidh Chakrabarti, pointed to the circulation in April of the "false news" that Dr Aly - the first Muslim woman to sit in the Australian Parliament - had refused to lay a wreath at an Anzac Day ceremony.

"We recognise that the same tools that give people more voice can sometimes be used, by anyone, to spread hoaxes and misinformation," Mr Chakrabarti wrote.

"There is active debate about how much of our information diet is tainted by false news - and how much it influences people's behaviour. But even a handful of deliberately misleading stories can have dangerous consequences."

The rumour about Dr Aly was widely shared by far-right activists including Kim Vuga of the Love Australia or Leave Party and the MP's Facebook page was flooded with abuse.

"This was spread in the echo chamber of right-wing people on Facebook," Dr Aly told Fairfax Media on Tuesday.

"You want this platform of free and open discourse - it's vital - but on the other hand, it can have those dangerous consequences. And if it becomes predominantly an echo chamber, then that goes against the grain of democracy, because it doesn't expose people to other views and facts."

After initially being dismissive about the implications of its growing significance in news consumption and public discourse, Facebook has been forced to confront concerns following the widely reported Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election in the United States, including through social media.

In his post, Mr Chakrabarti said the election had elevated the issues of foreign meddling, "fake news" and political polarisation.

"Facebook was originally designed to connect friends and family - and it has excelled at that. But as unprecedented numbers of people channel their political energy through this medium, it's being used in unforeseen ways with societal repercussions that were never anticipated," he said.

"In 2016, we at Facebook were far too slow to recognise how bad actors were abusing our platform. We're working diligently to neutralise these risks now."

Earlier this month, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg unveiled major changes to the platform. The algorithm that decides what users see on their news feeds will now reduce the prominence of content from publishers and companies and boost the focus on personal posts from family and friends.

Mr Zuckberg has also announced that, as part of an effort to boost reliable news sources, Facebook will survey users on the brands they view as trustworthy. The company has also used third-party fact-checkers to flag misinformation, with suspect posts being prevented from going viral.

Dr Aly - an expert on countering violent extremism who previously worked with internet giant Google on their approach to dealing with dangerous content - said Facebook needed to be more proactive in monitoring what was published by its users.

"There's stuff that I've reported on Facebook that hasn't been taken down, that apparently hasn't violated their standards," she said.

Dr Aly also warned that it was not the role of social media companies to decide what the truth was, saying education was critical in empowering regular people to be discerning and analytical in their consumption of information online.