“There’s too much sensationalism, misinformation and polarisation in the world today,” company CEO Mark Zuckerberg writes in a Friday Facebook post. So Facebook will soon unveil a ranking system for news sources. It’s part of the company’s plan to prioritize “high quality” news in users’ News Feeds, which Zuckerberg says “helps build a sense of common ground.”
The hard part? Figuring out which news sources to prioritise. Facebook has been wrestling with the issue, and decided to leave it up to the public, which Zuckerberg claims will be the “most objective.”
The company has already surveyed a “diverse” group of users with two main questions: are they familiar with a specific news source, and if so, do they trust it? The goal has been to pinpoint which news sources are “broadly trusted across society,” Zuckerberg says.
“The idea is that some news organizations are only trusted by their readers or watchers, and others are broadly trusted across society even by those who don’t follow them directly,” he explains.
Facebook will start testing the change in the US next week and plans an international rollout sometime in the future. It comes as the company is overhauling the Facebook News Feed to show more posts from family and friends, but less content from businesses, brands, and media organisations.
According to PCMag, Zuckerberg is making the changes to ensure the time spent on the service is “well spent.” However, some media publishers have been worried their traffic from Facebook will plummet as a result. In his post, Zuckerberg admits that news will “make up roughly 4 percent of News Feed—down from roughly 5 per cent today.”
It’s a “big change,” he says, “but news will always be a critical way for people to start conversations on important topics.”
That’s likely cold comfort for news organizations that have been courted by Facebook for years to make the social network their main social media distribution channel. In a separate statement Facebook said, “For the first change in the US next week, publications deemed trustworthy by people using Facebook may see an increase in their distribution. Publications that do not score highly as trusted by the community may see a decrease.”
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