As you have probably already noticed, Facebook is going through dramatic changes. Now, they have rolled out massive updates that dramatically change the type of content you see.
Facebook promotes news from what they label “trusted sources.”
Those “trusted sources” aren’t based on what you trust, but what they trust. They claim the pages will be based on “diverse and representative” criteria determined by sample pools of Facebook users. But no one – except Facebook itself – knows just what the rules are for the selection process. You can bet that conservative, Christian, or other traditional sites won’t be heard.
The good news is you can get around the social media censors by ***SIGNING UP for The Political Insider Newsletter***
Facebook noted they will rank news outlets it deems to be “reputable.” Here is a recent Fox Business report on the massive changes:
Facebook is under tremendous pressure from the left and anti-Trump Democrats in Congress to make changes after the 2016 election. And their hastily made changes will dramatically change how you read the news.
But there are a few ways to ensure you don’t miss stories from the The Political Insider.
First – SIGN UP for The Political Insider’s Newsletter. Hundreds of thousands of Americans just like you read The Political Insider’s Newsletter every day, because we don’t hide the news from you like Facebook and Google do.
Second, below are the instructions for how to update your Facebook settings so that your newsfeed prioritizes posts by sites you follow, like The Political Insider, rather than letting the platform determine what you get to see.
Step 1) Go to the drop-down arrow at the top righthand corner and select “News Feed Preferences.”
Step 2) Select “Prioritize who to see first.”
Step 3) Select “Pages Only”
Otherwise, we highly recommend a secondary option, where you can go to the page of the site you follow (such as The Political Insider) and choose “See First” in the drop-down menu below the button labeled “Following.”
Here is an excerpt from Mark Zuckerberg that explains the platform’s new emphasis on promoting “Trusted” news sources in order to protect against “sensationalism, misinformation, and polarization.”
There’s too much sensationalism, misinformation and polarization in the world today. Social media enables people to spread information faster than ever before, and if we don’t specifically tackle these problems, then we end up amplifying them. That’s why it’s important that News Feed promotes high quality news that helps build a sense of common ground.
The hard question we’ve struggled with is how to decide what news sources are broadly trusted in a world with so much division. We could try to make that decision ourselves, but that’s not something we’re comfortable with. We considered asking outside experts, which would take the decision out of our hands but would likely not solve the objectivity problem. Or we could ask you — the community — and have your feedback determine the ranking.
We decided that having the community determine which sources are broadly trusted would be most objective.
Here’s how this will work. As part of our ongoing quality surveys, we will now ask people whether they’re familiar with a news source and, if so, whether they trust that source. The idea is that some news organizations are only trusted by their readers or watchers, and others are broadly trusted across society even by those who don’t follow them directly. (We eliminate from the sample those who aren’t familiar with a source, so the output is a ratio of those who trust the source to those who are familiar with it.)
This update will not change the amount of news you see on Facebook. It will only shift the balance of news you see towards sources that are determined to be trusted by the community.
Remember – SIGN UP for The Political Insider’s Newsletter – take back control of your news!