Facebook Set To Break With Past And Begin Ranking News Sources By Quality

Facebook has decided to move from platform to content referee as it will start ranking news sources in its feed based on quality as evaluated by users, Deepa Seetharaman reported for the Wall Street Journal. The social media giant faced a lot of flak during and after the 2016 United States (US) presidential election when false information spread through the platform unchecked.

From the next week, Facebook will provide a boost, in the news feed, to those publications which a large cross-section of its users have recognised as trustworthy. Those publications that receive a thumbs-down from users will see a downgrade in the news feed.

This change will apply to the US for now, and will be rolled out internationally at a later time.

Facebook will be entering new ground with this move, and the Facebook executive who oversees the news feed recognises it. “This is an interesting and tricky thing for us to pursue because I don’t think we can decide what sources of news are trusted and what are not trusted, the same way I don’t think we can’t decide what is true and what is not,” Adam Mosseri said in an interview.

This break with the past has got news publishers who rely on Facebook to drive up website traffic, worried since it will all come down to user judgment and the process may not be transparent. The publisher of the conservative site Daily Caller, Neil Patel, says, “For a company that wields this much power to make these kind of decisions with zero transparency really scares me.”

The extent to which this step will curb the spread of false information depends on how Facebook’s process for determining the quality of a news publication evolves. Till then, users will have to contend with an imperfect system.