Facebook to prioritise ‘trustworthy’ news based on surveys

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook Inc will prioritize "trustworthy" news in its feed of social media posts, using member surveys to identify high-quality outlets and fight sensationalism and misinformation, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday.

The company, which has more than 2 billion monthly users, said its members, not experts or Facebook executives, would determine how news outlets rank in terms of trustworthiness.

It also said it would put an emphasis on local news sources.

The move is likely to send shockwaves through the media landscape in nearly every country, given the ubiquity of the world´s largest social network and how central it has become in some places to the distribution of news.

Zuckerberg said on Friday he expects recently announced changes to shrink the amount of news on Facebook by 20 percent, to about 4 percent of all content from 5 percent currently.

The chief executive outlined the shakeup in a post on Facebook, saying that starting next week the News Feed, the company´s centerpiece product, would prioritize "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 tackle these problems, then we end up amplifying them," he wrote.