Freedom Outpost: Facebook is planning a major change to their news feed. According to those briefed on this change, Facebook believes prioritizing content that’s acted on will reduce the occurrence of fake and offensive content in the news feed.
The change will decisively favor user content and effectively deprioritize publishers’ content, according to three publishers that have been briefed by the platform ahead of the move, according to Digiday. It looks like it is simply another way to censor dissenting views.
Facebook told publishers that content from reputable publishers will also be surfaced. It didn’t specify how it would define “reputable publisher” or how their traffic would be impacted, though. The worry for publishers is that such an approach will have the unintended consequence of hurting high-quality content because a lot of legitimate news articles, while they may get read, tend not to get shared or commented on.
The Daily Sheeple‘s Joe Joseph also believes this is nothing more than a full-blown censorship attempt by the social media outlet. “Big change is comin’,” says Joseph. “It’s time to pull out the stops of censorship because it is going full tilt.”