Today, Facebook’s VP of product management for news feed Adam Mosseri announced that they are continuing their fight on fake news on their website by implementing an update that will reduce the amount of spamming from people who post a lot on Facebook, according to this Facebook news post.
Here is the post, in full which also can be found on Facebook’s Newsroom:
“Today we are making an update to help reduce low quality links in News Feed. We are always working to improve people’s experience in News Feed by showing more stories that we think people will find informative and entertaining.
Our research shows that there is a tiny group of people on Facebook who routinely share vast amounts of public posts per day, effectively spamming people’s feeds. Our research further shows that the links they share tend to include low quality content such as clickbait, sensationalism, and misinformation. As a result, we want to reduce the influence of these spammers and deprioritize the links they share more frequently than regular sharers. Of course, this is only one signal among many others that may affect the ranking prioritization of this type of post. This update will only apply to links, such as an individual article, not to domains, Pages, videos, photos, check-ins or status updates.
One of our core News Feed values is that News Feed should be informative. By taking steps like this to improve News Feed, we’re able to surface more stories that people find informative and reduce the spread of problematic links such as clickbait, sensationalism and misinformation.
Will This Impact My Page?
Most publishers won’t see any significant changes to their distribution in News Feed. Publishers that get meaningful distribution from people who routinely share vast amounts of public posts per day may see a reduction in the distribution of those specific links. As always, publishers should keep in mind these basic guideposts to reach their audience on Facebook and continue to post stories that are relevant to their audiences and that their readers find informative.”
Facebook has been working to help stop the spreading of fake news on the its platform. The website was even accused of possibly influencing the last election so that Donald Trump would win due to all the fake news about Hillary Clinton, but Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg denied these claims and also said that out of all the posts on Facebook, a very small amount makes up fake news according to the New York Times.
“That said, we don’t want any hoaxes on Facebook. Our goal is to show people the content they will find most meaningful, and people want accurate news,” said Zuckerberg in a Facebook post right after the elections. “We have already launched work enabling our community to flag hoaxes and fake news, and there is more we can do here. We have made progress, and we will continue to work on this to improve further.”
One of their ways to stop fake news was to allow users to flag what is considered fake news. This update rolled out in December of last year after Facebook had been accused by both users and the media to have somehow influenced the election.
“It’s important to us that the stories you see on Facebook are authentic and meaningful. We’re excited about this progress, but we know there’s more to be done. We’re going to keep working on this problem for as long as it takes to get it right,” said Mosseri in a blog post written back in December.
It seems as if Facebook is taking the necessary steps to help combat fake news. Hopefully, there will be a reduction of fake news found on the social media website.
Featured image via Pixabay
