Facebook is launching a set of new tools to combat the spread of harmful content and misinformation across its family of apps, including Instagram and Facebook Messenger.
Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. By Elizabeth Dwoskin Elizabeth Dwoskin Silicon Valley Correspondent Email Bio Follow April 10 at 6:00 PM MENLO PARK, Calif. — For years, Facebook has built its algorithms to maximize engagement and clicks — a strategy that has helped the company garner 2.7 billion users across its family of apps, including Instagram and Messenger.
The question is whether these changes are tweaks on the margins or more fundamental fixes to a service that--while massively profitable--has experienced a precipitous loss of public trust. The newsfeed algorithm alone takes in hundreds of thousands of behavioral signals when it evaluates which posts get promotion — and it’s tough to assess the impact any single fix might have on such a complex system.
Facebook may be making some progress in reducing the viral spread of false information in the U.S. Outside researchers have found there were significant drops in the proportion of Americans who visited fake news websites during the 2018 congressional elections compared to the presidential election in 2016.
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