Facebook Inc will prioritize “trustworthy” news in its feed of social media posts, using member surveys to identify high-quality outlets and fight sensationalism and misinformation, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday. The company, which has more than 2 billion monthly users, said its members, not experts or Facebook executives, would determine how news outlets rank in terms of trustworthiness. It also said it would put an emphasis on local news sources. The move is likely to send shockwaves through the media landscape in nearly every country, given the ubiquity of the world’s largest social network and how central it has become in some places to the distribution of news. Zuckerberg said on Friday he expects recently announced changes to shrink the amount of news on Facebook by 20 percent, to about four percent of all content from five percent currently. The chief executive outlined the shakeup in a post on Facebook, saying that starting next week the News Feed, the company’s centerpiece product, would prioritize “high quality news” over less trusted sources. “There’s too much sensationalism, misinformation and polarization in the world today,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Social media enables people to spread information faster than ever before, and if we don’t specifically tackle these problems, then we end up amplifying them,” he wrote. The quality of news on Facebook has been called into question after alleged Russian operatives, for-profit spammers and others spread false reports on the site, including during the 2016 U.S. election campaign. Two years ago, Facebook users… [Read full story]
Facebook is boosting its efforts to put more news in its News Feed -- that is, real news from the news media, rather than status updates from friends. SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook is boosting its efforts to put more news in its News Feed -- that is, real news from the news media, rather than status updates from friends. The world's biggest social network, cognizant of its growing importance for discovering news, said in a blog post on Monday that it is revising the way it delivers information to its billion-plus users. "People use Facebook to share and connect, including staying…... [read more]
Facebook said Friday it is further automating its "trending" stories feature, a move that will scale back human input to prevent personal bias from influencing which stories get highlighted. The social media giant will rely more heavily on an algorithm to operate the feature, which lists what news or events are hot topics, no longer requiring people to write descriptions, according to a Facebook blog post. The feature prompted controversy earlier this year, with critics alleging that Facebook's news curators were deliberately omitting stories from politically conservative outlets, allegations the company denied. Facebook said relying more heavily on software will…... [read more]
So much for "Facebook fatigue." A survey released on Friday shows that people who have used the social networking site over a long period - since its founding in 2004, say - show no sign that they are tired of posting pictures, updating weekend plans or just relaying random thoughts. The Pew Research Center report, based on a U.S. phone survey, logs and data from November 2010, sheds light on Facebook's possible long-term popularity as the company founded by Mark Zuckerberg heads for a $5 billion initial public offering. Ahead of the IPO, one concern about Facebook has been that…... [read more]
Photo: Facebook SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook on Tuesday (Nov 19) launched FB Techwire, billed as a showplace for technology talk shared by influential sources."The goal of FB Techwire is to aid in the discovery of original content including breaking news, first-person analysis, photos and videos for journalists that care about and cover tech," Facebook said in an email to AFP. "With every breaking tech story, debate, launch or event we will find, verify and share the most relevant and high-value content to the tech community on Facebook in real time."The amount of newsworthy content shared at the world's leading social network…... [read more]
The move is a shift in strategy for the world's largest social network, which previously has tried to keep users within its own service, and may help restore its image by strengthening ties to respected news organizations after the spread of false news stories on Facebook in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.It may also help soothe relations with some publishers, which often see their articles widely shared among Facebook's more than 2 billion monthly users but have found it hard to translate Facebook readers into paying subscribers.While publishers will own the data on users who buy a…... [read more]
