Facebook’s curbs on fake news shake up biggest publishers
FACEBOOK has begun to rank British news organisations based on an opaque “trust score”, leading to changes in online audiences for some publishers.
The social network changed the algorithm that governs its central news feed last month in the UK, India, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
The change prioritises “high qual- ity” sources, while punishing those deemed unreliable.
The move, first introduced in the US in January, is the latest attempt in Facebook’s long-running battle to counter fake and misleading news, but appears to have affected some major news organisations.
In the month the changes took place, the Daily Mail website saw engagement in the UK – a measure of how often users comment, share or otherwise interact with a story on Facebook – fall by 15pc, according to Newswhip, which tracks news websites on social media.
Mailonline, which was already suffering from a decline in traffic from Facebook, was overtaken by the BBC as the British news website with the most engagement after a 27pc increase in engagement month on month. The Daily Telegraph website, which has a smaller Facebook audience, also saw engagement increase.
Facebook fiercely guards the algorithm that is used to rank how status updates, photos and news stories appear in its news feed. The company has not revealed the trust scores of various publishers, or to what extent the recent changes affect them.
Social media researchers at Ezy Insights, who analysed Facebook engagement in the biggest European countries, said that several publishers appeared to have big swings in reach at the start of July, although they said the intricacies of Facebook’s algorithms meant they could not conclusively link this to the introduction of trust scores.
Facebook’s trust scores for publishers are based on asking users for their opinions on various websites. The move became instantly controversial when it emerged that the user survey used to helped determine the scores consisted of just two questions, which critics said could make it vulnerable to being manipulated.
A Facebook spokesman said the company did not believe it was possible to “game” the surveys, and that the changes did not mean an overall decrease in the amount of news people would see on Facebook.
The changes are among a series of curveballs Facebook has thrown at news websites. Earlier this year, a separate change decreased the frequency of news on Facebook by 20pc.