Facebook Considers Prioritizing Trustworthy News Sources in Feed -- Update
January 12 2018 - 12:09AM
Dow Jones News
By Deepa Seetharaman, Lukas I. Alpert and Benjamin Mullin
Facebook Inc. is broadly overhauling the way it presents news
and information on its platform, as it struggles to address
criticism from users and others about the quality of the content
shared there and its effect on society.
Under planned changes announced Thursday, Facebook will favor
posts, photos and videos in the news feed that are shared and
discussed among users and their friends over those posted by
businesses and news organizations -- a likely blow to companies
that rely on Facebook to reach customers. The company also is
weighing another major change that could eventually elevate media
outlets deemed more trustworthy compared with publishers considered
less credible, people familiar with the matter said.
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday called the initial
move "a major change in how we build Facebook" that would decrease
how much time users spend on the platform and hurt publisher
traffic, but ultimately make users happier and boost Facebook's
business.
The other potential change would involve ranking news outlets
based on some measures of credibility, such as public polling about
news outlets, and whether readers are willing to pay for news from
particular publishers, the people familiar with the matter said.
Such variables would inform the Facebook algorithms that determine
which publishers' posts are pushed higher in the feed, one of the
people said.
Such a move would thrust Facebook into an even more active role
in deciding what content is acceptable on its site -- a role that
makes some publishers uneasy. The company hasn't decided whether to
proceed with that shift, and it may choose not to do so.
This potential change, as well as the steps outlined Thursday,
illustrate Mr. Zuckerberg's willingness to make big changes and
consider ideas he previously resisted to address the growing risks
looming over the company that he co-founded 14 years ago and that
is now used by more than two billion people.
Thursday's announcement follows criticism, including from some
former Facebook executives and employees, that Facebook is designed
to foster dependence on its platform. Facebook addressed those
concerns in a blog post last month that said "passive" social-media
use could be harmful to users' mental health.
Mr. Zuckerberg said Thursday that the results of Facebook's
internal research and discussions with outside researchers prompted
him to order the planned overhaul.
The company's product teams will now focus on driving
"meaningful social interactions" rather showing relevant content.
Facebook's internal analysis found that this kind of engagement was
more likely to happen among friends than among strangers commenting
on public content including news articles shared by
publications.
Facebook's software will now elevate posts that a user might
choose to discuss with his or her Facebook connections, said Adam
Mosseri, Facebook's head of news feed, in a blog post.
The moves will change how Facebook handles video, by giving
priority to those that users engage with and playing down those
that generate views by automatically playing when seen in a
person's feed.
The changes also could hurt many companies that rely on Facebook
to reach an audience and drum up traffic. Mr. Zuckerberg said users
will see less content from businesses including news
publishers.
The other big change being considered would help some publishers
-- but also marks a major shift in Facebook's role.
Facebook previously has been reluctant to make editorial
decisions about the quality or veracity of what is posted on its
platform. Mr. Zuckerberg has sought to keep Facebook from taking on
editorial responsibilities, saying repeatedly that Facebook wants
to minimize the spread of false information on its platform without
becoming the "arbiters of truth."
But some critics have said the company, as the most powerful
distributor of media content on the web, has a duty to police its
feed and work hard to weed out misinformation.
"Facebook has an enormous amount of power and agency when it
comes to deciding if publishers will thrive or not thrive," said
Emily Bell, director of the Tow-Knight Center for Digital
Journalism at Columbia University.
A measure like the potential trustworthy rating "isn't going to
benefit everybody, but it is a move that adds some clarity to what
was a cloudy and disingenuous position from Facebook -- that all
content should be treated equally," Ms. Bell said.
It is unclear how the new ranking system would affect
publishers' reach -- it would likely vary from outlet to outlet.
Some publishers fear that promoting community posts over news could
eat into the traffic they receive via Facebook significantly.
Facebook has adjusted its algorithm over the years on multiple
occasions to weed out content it believed was cluttering users'
feeds, such as "clickbait" stories. Dealing with "fake news,"
stories that are either hoaxes or conspiracy theories or that
include demonstrably false information, has proved tricker.
The company already has joined with outside fact-checkers like
PolitiFact and Snopes to mark completely false stories, lowering
their prominence in the news feed. And it has launched features
such as "related articles" that push readers to think twice before
sharing a story.
Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com and
Lukas I. Alpert at lukas.alpert@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 11, 2018 23:54 ET (04:54 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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