Facebook recently made another update in their system, as they intend to solve the problem regarding fake news sites and click bait ads. The tweak will bury the unwanted posts on the News Feed and will make relevant stories rank higher.
Since it was alleged that President Donald Trump won the elections because of the fake news propaganda, the combat against such websites became more intense as Google have started tweaking their rankings and blacklisted some of them from their search engine. Now, Facebook has been more aware of their responsibility as the world's leading social network on dealing with this problem.
For the past few months, Facebook labelled fake news websites as "misleading, illegal and deceptive sites" thus banning them from using their Audience Network. The Audience Network shows advertisements on Facebook, mobile apps, and other websites.
Facebook then had a solution for the fake news and click bait issue. They would need "signals" from users on identifying which links or websites are considered to be unwanted in the News Feed. According to Facebook's News Room, they value authentic communication. So an authentic story will resonate the most - they will have the most number of interactions.
So what appears on the News Feed from now on will be those posted and had the most interaction like shares, comments and likes. These universal signals will come from the people from the friends list. The pages will then be categorized whether fake or authentic depending on the real-time interactions with it. On the other hand, fake news, spams, and click baits will be categorized if they are constantly being hidden or flagged by users, as reported by Engadget.
So the more "relevant" to the user the post is, the higher its ranking will be on the News Feed. This new tweak on Facebook will boost viral and authentic stories but will also bury the fake and unwanted ones.
