It is more and more clear that all the social networks are beginning a fight against fake news that has spread all over the world in the past years and they are changing algorithms to stop it.
What’s new to Facebook?
One of the changes that Facebook made to its algorithms is called Click-Gap. What does this mean? That they will, from now on, supervise all the links that make it to the social network and, if they don’t have a good domain authority or few other websites link to them, they will broaden the website’s reach within the news feed. So bye-bye to websites that have only been popular on Facebook versus the real world.
The second change Facebook is making is taking care of the groups. Because most of the fake news and misinformation is spread there. But groups can also be private. Or secret. And interacting with those can also mean a privacy invasion. So what Facebook will be doing is checking on the administrators and moderators of those groups and the content they approve. So if they see some unusual activity, links or other types of information that might be misleading, they will also broaden the reach of the certain groups.
All groups and admins will be notified if fake news are being spread with a new feature called group quality.
All those changes will appear in the Community Standards section on Facebook and you can check there what to do or don’t.
So the three words that best describe Facebook’s algorithm change are: remove; reduce; inform.
Facebook Changes Its Algorithms
Remove:
- the new Community Standards, where users can check on the latest changes whenever they want;
- the new Group Quality feature.
Reduce:
- reaching out to experts in different fields, which will help them eradicate the spread of fake news, bullying, racism etc;
- a third-party check for news articles;
- reducing the reach of groups which share fake news or misinformation;
- a see less for articles that have poor quality.
Inform
- News Feed context button to images;
- more information on the Facebook Page Quality Tab;
- Forward indicator and Context Button in Messenger;
- allowing users to delete their posts within groups even if they left them;
- an updated block feature in Messenger;
- trust indicator to news feed context button.
What do you think about Facebook’s changes? Will they indeed affect the spread of fake news?
See also: The Most Effective Types of Social Media Advertising in 2019
