Late Friday afternoon, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will be elevating news sources that users deem trustworthy and punishing those that users determine not to be trustworthy as part of its new News Feed overhaul.
In a post on Facebook, Zuckerberg said that there’s “too much sensationalism, misinformation and polarization in the world today.” In order to seemingly try to keep everyone on the same page when it comes to the news they share, Facebook unveiled the new “trusted sources” program.
According to Zuckerberg, Facebook will be trying to figure out what news sources are “broadly trusted” by the general public. In order to do this, Facebook will be asking users whether they’re familiar with a source and, if so, if they believe the source is trustworthy. If the Facebook community finds a source trustworthy, its presence will be greater in News Feeds. If the Facebook community says a source is not trustworthy, it will not appear as much in News Feeds.
As Zuckerberg writes:
This update will not change the amount of news you see on Facebook. It will only shift the balance of news you see towards sources that are determined to be trusted by the community.
The news release on the Facebook website also mentions that publications will see their Facebook viewership change depending on how users rank them:
We’ll be working on these efforts for the rest of the year. For the first change in the US next week, publications deemed trustworthy by people using Facebook may see an increase in their distribution. Publications that do not score highly as trusted by the community may see a decrease.
Therefore, if you like a certain source, but the general Facebook public considers it “untrustworthy,” it is possible you will see less of the site’s posts in your own feed. News sites that people consider to be “trustworthy”—particularly if they are mainstream sources—would instead make up more of your feed’s content and be rewarded with “an increase in their distribution.”