Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday the company would begin to give priority to “trustworthy” media in social media broadcasts where the company is working to combat “excitement” and “misleading information.”
The company, which has more than 2 billion users a month, said it would use opinion polls to determine the media’s ranking from a talk of confidence.
Zuckerberg reviewed the amendment in a Facebook posting, saying that starting next week the news service, the company’s flagship product, will give priority to “high-quality news” on less-worthy sources.
“There is a lot of excitement, misleading information and polarization in the world today,” Zuckerberg wrote.
“Social media allows people to disseminate information faster than ever, and if we do not address these problems specifically, we will end up amplifying them,” he says.
At the same time, Zuckerberg said that the overall amount of news on Facebook would shrink to about 4 percent of the content of the newscast, compared to 5 percent now.
Facebook had a strong relationship with news outlets, especially those with strong political leanings. In 2016, US lawmakers expressed concern that Facebook was blocking news stories of interest to conservative readers.
Zuckerberg said last week that the company would change the way subscribers and videos serve in the news service to prioritize what friends and families share.
