Facebook may have had modest beginnings: It was a way for college males to rate the hotness of female students. But it somehow grew into a global service that may have helped make Donald Trump president for four years, becoming an unstoppable hotbed of misinformation. And though the site’s top brass has tried to limit its spread (such as banning Trump himself, though he could slink back in), they say they’re finally going to take further steps to reduce its political content altogether.
Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of the social media giant, said on a conference call Wednesday that they’re trying a new way to reduce the amount of users sharing fake news from sites with questionable urls: They’re going to reduce the amount of political content in the News Feed section altogether.
“One of the top pieces of feedback that we’re hearing from our community right now is that people don’t want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services,” Zuckerberg — described by Deadline as “clearly worn down by recent events” — told reporters. Apart from changing what’s in the News Feed, he didn’t specify any other ways to stop the spread of far right lies. “We are still working through the best way to do this,” he admitted.
The announcement comes three weeks after the failed MAGA coup, in which whipped-up Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. They organized in part over social media, not just Facebook but Twitter and, especially, the currently AWOL Parler, which lost a lot of its foundation in the fatal riot. As mentioned, Facebook was quick to ban Trump from their coffers, though, unlike Twitter, the move wasn’t permanent.
(Via Deadline)