Facebook changes news feed to allow users to manage spam and fact-checked content
Christopher Hutton
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Facebook is allowing users to regulate their news feed with new controls that increase or diminish the presence of spam, sensitive, or “fact-checked” content, a change meant to increase user control over how much “censored” content they see.
Facebook announced the new settings on Wednesday, which build on similar content control settings added to Instagram in 2021. Users can increase the “demoted” content in their feed concerning one of four categories. Demoted content includes low-quality spam, “unoriginal” posts such as those produced by content farms, “sensitive” content such as suicidal posts, and “fact-checked” posts such as topics related to politically sensitive subjects such as COVID-19 or the 2020 election. Each of the four categories can be managed individually by the user.
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“We’re giving people on Facebook even more power to control the algorithm that ranks posts in their Feed. We’re doing this in response to users telling us that they want a greater ability to decide what they see on our apps,” a Meta spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “This builds on work that we’ve been doing for a long time in this area and will help to make user controls on Facebook more consistent with the ones that already exist on Instagram.”
The first three categories will be available in the coming weeks globally, while the “fact check” category will only be available in the United States at launch. The fact check category will also allow users to affect the prevalence of the “fact check” tags on relevant posts.
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The platform is making the change as governments pressure its parent company, Meta, to allow users more control. Meta recently presented plans to allow European users to opt out of having their data collected. Congress also pressured Facebook in 2021 over its handling of children and algorithms in light of the “Facebook files” revelations.
The new features are part of a set of changes to user settings over the last few years. The company last year changed its news feed so users would see more content from family and friends by separating the posts from more entertaining content.