Facebook Inc chief and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg sets the record straight for low-quality news stories, noting they will be buried in the deep soon. Zuckerberg on Friday announced that Facebook will prioritise "trustworthy" news in a bid to cleanse its news feed of social media posts from sensational and misleading articles.
The company said Facebook users will have the power to determine how media outlets rank in terms of trustworthiness. Local news sources will also be given more emphasis. These changes will take effect starting next week.
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Zuckerberg remains unfazed amid the criticism of many news organisations as well as those highly depending on the social media to propagate their stories. Many are expecting the possibility of marred relationships with news outlets and publications when these changes go live.
In his statement, he expects the change will trim down the amount of news on Facebook by 20 percent to about four percent. Currently, five percent of all content on the social network is news.
"There's too much sensationalism, misinformation and polarization in the world today," writes Zuckerberg. "Social media enables people to spread information faster than ever before, and if we don't specifically tackle these problems, then we end up amplifying them."
Ever since the alleged meddling of Russia in the 2016 US presidential election campaign through the social media broke out, Facebook has met a barrage of criticisms, forcing the company to double down on its efforts to screen bogus accounts and intrusive ads.
