Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News
In his post on Friday, Mr. Zuckerberg said the newest change “will only shift the balance
of news you see towards sources that are determined to be trusted by the community.”
In one survey, people were asked if they recognized a number of websites
and then asked, ““How much do you trust each of these domains?” They were able to choose from a range of answers, including entirely, a lot, somewhat, barely and not at all
“What will happen in situations where a community determines
that a news source is trustworthy, but that news source is censored, or illegal, in that country?” asked Mr. Kaye, noting that in many parts of the world, governments controlled all official news channels while independent news sources were outlawed or forced to publish pseudo-anonymously.
“What will Mark Zuckerberg do when the needs of the community, in what it determines
is trusted news, are different from what the government determines.
He added that the user-generated ranking system “is a massive abdication of its social responsibility,
as a vital platform, to be a good custodian of the Fourth Estate globally.”
For example, a recent test to remove all news publishers from the News Feed
and to place them under a separate tab in six countries, including Bolivia and Slovakia, yielded an unexpected result of magnifying the amount of fake news on the platform.
