Facebook has plans to adjust their timeline feature to show users more posts from their friends and families rather than news stories and articles from publishers.
The adjustment has been put into place to combat the growing political toxicity on the platform as well as false news services flooding the website during the 2016 United States election. On average news articles are planned to drop by approximately 20 per cent for all users.
Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul behind the Fox Network and The Wall Street Journal, has stated that Facebook should pay “trusted” publishers for their content on the site. His proposition works similar to a cable company service, where they pay networks for their channels.
Murdoch stated that publishers are enhancing the integrity and value of the site from their content and news. However they aren’t being rewarded for the services that they bring.
Murdoch suggested carriage payments would be the best fix as they pose less of a risk on Facebook’s profits but will have major benefits for publishers and journalists on the platform.
To deem what news sources are trustworthy, last week Facebook implemented a survey for their readers. The survey aims to compile a list of the top trusted news sources while also weeding out the less credible sources.
The major news sources see this as an opportunity to gain a larger control of the market share. The results from the survey could skew those who are seen as more trustworthy. Companies that make the grade would benefit immensely with lower quality sources essentially disappearing.
Murdoch has also blamed Google and Facebook for promoting “scurrilous news sources” through their unreliable algorithms. All solutions that have tried to be implemented so far have been inadequate in the mogul’s eyes.
The social media giant has been struggling to address criticism from their 2 billion user base in its role of spreading misinformation and toxic political agendas for close to a year.
Facebook has continued to lose its credibility with their trust from their users, dropping down an additional 2 percent, with barely half of users saying that they trust the platform for news.
In the meantime the trust for journalism has risen 5 per cent to a total of 59 per cent. All this data was present from the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer that was released on Monday.
Facebook’s loss in trust isn’t just a United States specific matter with all nations following suit. For a company’s long term goals, there is nothing worse than losing the trust of the public.