{"id":393316,"date":"2018-01-20T08:42:06","date_gmt":"2018-01-20T08:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=393316"},"modified":"2018-01-20T08:42:06","modified_gmt":"2018-01-20T08:42:06","slug":"facebook-use-surveys-boost-trustworthy-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2018\/01\/facebook-use-surveys-boost-trustworthy-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook to use surveys to boost \u2018trustworthy\u2019 news"},"content":{"rendered":"
Facebook has announced it will prioritise news sources deemed to be more trustworthy on its News Feed.<\/p>\n
The firm said the social network community will determine which outlets are reliable via the use of user surveys.<\/p>\n
Founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said news content will soon make up around 4% of what appeared in people’s News Feeds – down from 5% before.<\/p>\n
The move is the latest attempt by the company to quell the spread of so-called fake news and propaganda on the network.<\/p>\n
Mark Zuckerberg vows to ‘fix’ Facebook<\/strong><\/p>\n As part of that continuing battle, Twitter also announced on Friday that it had notified 677,775 US-based users who had retweeted, liked or followed Russian bot accounts on the network in the run up to the 2016 US presidential election.<\/p>\n The change is an attempt to shift the key judgements over bias and accuracy away from Facebook’s employees, and onto its user base.<\/p>\n “We could try to make that decision ourselves, but that’s not something we’re comfortable with,” Mr Zuckerberg said.<\/p>\n “We considered asking outside experts, which would take the decision out of our hands but would likely not solve the objectivity problem. Or we could ask you – the community – and have your feedback determine the ranking.”<\/p>\n Users will be asked, as they sometimes are about advertising, whether they recognise a news brand and if they trust it.<\/p>\n Facebook’s theory – yet to be tested on a large scale – is that while there are many partisan outlets that have readers that trust them, there is a smaller subset of media companies that a majority people find “broadly trustworthy”, whatever their particular leanings.<\/p>\n