We kind of saw this coming and it was mostly Facebook's doing.
Socialmediaexaminer.com posted an article May 26, "Facebook Adds New Alerts and Individual User Penalties To Help Stop the Spread of Misinformation."
According to the article, Facebook has implemented informational alerts, and increased individual user penalties, based on the distribution of content that has been flagged as false by fact-checking teams.
"According to Pew Research, around 71% of people now get at least some of their news input from social media platforms, with Facebook leading the way, which means that there's significant potential for the platform to influence opinion through the sharing of perceived 'facts' among its audience," the article says.
When Facebook initially launched in 2004 and for the first several years of the platform, content shared on users' newsfeeds were arranged in the order of which they were posted by their friends. In 2009, that changed.
At that time, Facebook made a major change in how content was presented to users. It created an algorithm that used computer calculations to put value on a post (such as engagement, interest and relevance), rather on when it was posted. Thus, in doing so, content that generated high user engagement and interest was made more available to users.
That practice has long been ridiculed for a number of reasons. Among those reasons was the secrecy of how content was presented to users and when.
But the major reason for the ridicule has come within the last few years with the spread of misinformation or fake news. It became overly apparent and criticized during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. And it has continued to receive scrutiny since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.
It's one of the biggest reasons Facebook is losing trust among users.
A recent study, which you can read about in a previous blog post, "Who is trustworthy in social media universe?" Facebook ranked ninth as far as being able to be trusted by social media users.
The debate and concerns going forward will be Facebook's accuracy and how tough will it be. Opponents to this idea believe it is an infringement on free speech.
No comments:
Post a Comment