Facebook Removes Temporary Algorithm Change That Had Blocked Misinformation

Facebook's employees and executives "are battling over how to reduce misinformation and hate speech without hurting the company's bottom line," reports the New York Times, after employees had spotted false and misleading election-related misinformation going viral on the site. The solution' Make temporary changes to the controversial algorithm "which helps determine what more than two billion people see every day" by highlighting "big, mainstream publishers like CNN, The New York Times and NPR, while posts from highly engaged hyperpartisan pages, such as Breitbart and Occupy Democrats, became less visible, the employees said." The Wrap reports:Zuckerberg's decision came after Facebook employees, seeing President Trump claim the election was rigged against him, "proposed an emergency change" to make "authoritative news" more prominent. It's unclear how long the changes were in place for, but they appear to have ended. Facebook vice president Guy Rosen told the Times "there has never been a plan to make these permanent...." Since making the changes a few weeks ago, some Facebook employees have pushed for the "nicer" News Feed to become permanent, the report added. The New York Times argues the incident "illustrates a central tension that some inside Facebook are feeling acutely these days: that the company's aspirations of improving the world are often at odds with its desire for dominance.... "Even as Election Day and its aftermath have passed with few incidents, some disillusioned employees have quit, saying they could no longer stomach working for a company whose products they considered harmful."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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