Previously, Facebook changed its focus on news feed by announcing that they were refocusing on items shared by your friends and family, instead of just straight news. Following a previous announcement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today followed up by saying that the company is trying to identity and highlight “trusted sources” based on community feedback. Facebook wanted to avoid “sensationalism, misinformation and polarization.”
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, VP of product management, Adam Mosseri, who oversees the news feed, said “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.”
The social media giant has been heavily scrutinized from media, users and regulators about how much control they have in terms of the information seen by billions of people daily, so now they are attempting regulation by its own users and trying to solve problems.
Mosseri added that user rankings are still one of the weights the company uses to help order posts in their news feed. Right now, it’s unclear how Facebook will work to avoid attempts to game the system, whether it’s through use of bots, group reporting or other methods. According to Zuckerberg, this is just the start of a process to “prioritize news that is trustworthy, informative, and local.”
