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Facebook Changes Feed To Promote Posts That Aren't Fake, Sensational, Or Spam (techcrunch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the fine-tuned dept.

TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook is prioritizing "authentic" content in News Feed with a ranking algorithm change that detects and promotes content "that people consider genuine, and not misleading, sensational, or spammy." The algorithm will also boost stories that are going viral in real-time. From the report: To build the update, Facebook categorized Pages that frequently share inauthentic posts like fake news and clickbaity headlines, or get their posts hidden often. It then used these posts to train an algorithm that detects similar content as its shared in the News Feed. Facebook will now give extra feed visibility to posts that don't show signs of similarity to inauthentic content. Meanwhile, Facebook wants to more quickly surface big stories going viral either because the topic is being posted about by lots of people, or a Page post about the topic is seeing tons of engagement. Facebook will then take that as a signal that you might temporarily care more about the topic, and therefore show it in your News Feed while it's still hot. Facebook says it doesn't anticipate significant changes to most Pages' News Feed distribution, but some might see a small increase or decrease in referral traffic or outbound clicks depending on if they share authentic, timely content vs inauthentic and outdated stories.

4 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Third-party fact checkers scares the... by randomErr · · Score: 5, Informative
    Third-party fact checkers scares the hell out of me. Snopes, FactCheck.org, Politifact, ABC News, and AP can be argued not to be impartial and to have a political agenda. If that can be proven out then only one voice will truly be heard on Facebook.
    • Snopes ran by Kim Lacapria who self describes herself as 'openly left-leaning and a liberal.'
    • FactCheck.org and Politifact - Trump quoted an article about the number of deaths via the poorly ran Vetrans Adminstration. Trump was reported as giving false facts. When the original CNN article came out the article was reported as completely true.

    I can point out similar instances with the other sources. I'm not totally against using these sources but I want a balance from the other sources on the other side of the political aisle.

    --
    You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
    1. Re:Third-party fact checkers scares the... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Informative

      one could easily argue that the Trump photo was taken at a different time

      Yes, you could "easily" argue that, but you would be factually wrong. The photos I saw were taken within 5 minutes of the exact same time on their respective inauguration day.

      many people don't know what to believe.

      This is by design. Again, you have to remember which power structure is ascendant in an age when "many people don't know what to believe". It is not a coincidence and it is not accidental.

      Right now I'm leaning towards Trump because I've yet to personally meet a violent, irrational Trump supporter,

      https://www.vice.com/en_ca/art...

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    2. Re:Third-party fact checkers scares the... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually no. The "media narrative" photo was taken later. There is even a clock tower in that photo that you can zoom into. That picture has a physical world time stamp.

      The two most famous of these side-by-side pictures show times of 11:19am and 11:22am.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. Re: Better late than never by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    Umm the ban from Cuba was in no way comparable. It was closing a loophole that allowed cubans who could make it to the US mainland to stay, the wet foot, dry foot policy. It stopped the automatic acceptance of those people who were attempting to claim political asylum. Trumps ban stopped travel for people who had already been vetted and given access to the US.