Facebook Will Temporarily Reduce Visibility Of Political Content For Some Users

During this period, Facebook says it plans to explore a variety of alternate approaches to ranking political content in people’s feeds using different data points.

Facebook said Wednesday it will temporarily reduce the visibility of political content for a small percentage of users in Canada, Brazil, Indonesia and the U.S. amid questions about the platform’s ability to moderate hateful content and misinformation, some of which may have played a role in helping to organize the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last month.

Last month, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg claimed that the insurrection on the Capitol was largely organized on other social platforms that don’t have Facebook’s “standards and transparency.” However, Forbesreported that Facebook was mentioned 73 times in charging documents filed by the Justice Department in relation to the siege, compared to 24 mentions of YouTube and 20 of Instagram. Parler—despite being popular with the far-right—was only mentioned eight times. The data indicated that Facebook was strongly preferred by the rioters who have been charged and earlier reports showed cases of Facebook users publicly posting their intention to participate in the insurrection.

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