Facebook to prioritise 'trustworthy' news sources

Reuters  |  SAN FRANCISCO 

By David Ingram

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Inc will begin to prioritise "trustworthy" outlets on its stream of as it works to combat "sensationalism" and "misinformation," Chief Executive said on Friday.

The company, which has more than 2 billion monthly users, said it will use surveys to determine rankings on how trustworthy outlets are.

Zuckerberg outlined the shakeup in a post on Facebook, saying that starting next week the Feed, the company's centrepiece product, would prioritise "high quality news" over less trusted sources.

"There's too much sensationalism, misinformation and polarization in the world today," Zuckerberg wrote.

"Social media enables people to spread information faster than ever before, and if we don't specifically these problems, then we end up amplifying them," he wrote.

At the same time, Zuckerberg said the amount of overall on would shrink to roughly 4 percent of the content on the Feed from 5 percent currently.

has had a stormy relationship with organizations, especially those with strong political leanings.

In 2016, Republican U. S. lawmakers expressed concern that was suppressing stories of interest to conservative readers.

Last week, Zuckerberg said the company would change the way it filters posts and videos on Feed to prioritise what friends and family share.

(Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by and Leslie Adler)

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: Sat, January 20 2018. 03:16 IST