A new report is claiming that Meta, specifically Facebook, has been attempting to quell political content on the site since the January 2021 Capitol Riots, which were commonly said to be at least a little stoked by political content on the platform.
Amongst whistleblowers saying that Facebook stokes hate because it’s good for engagement and constant pressure against the platform, CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised to take steps to cull political content on the site.
As Zuckerberg noted in a Facebook earnings call on January 27th: “One of the top pieces of feedback 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.”
However, the change isn’t sitting well with Facebook or users, who like to have a bit of a debate on the site.
As WSJ notes: “Views of content from what Facebook deems ‘high quality news publishers’ such as Fox News and CNN fell more than material from outlets users considered less trustworthy. User complaints about misinformation climbed, and charitable donations via the company’s fundraiser product through Facebook fell in the first half of 2022.”
“Meta now estimates politics accounts for less than 3% of total content views in users’ newsfeed, down from 6% around the time of the 2020 election, the documents show. But instead of reducing views through indiscriminate suppression or heavy-handed moderation, Facebook has altered the newsfeed algorithm’s recommendations of sensitive content toward what users say they value, and away from what simply makes them engage, according to documents and people familiar with the efforts.”
