Facebook said Wednesday it will move to muffle the reach of political content on the social media platform, saying it will start testing news feeds for users in Canada, Indonesia, and Brazil.
Users will be surveyed about the tests to reduce political content, said Facebook.
Individual politicians’ pages will not be exempt from the tests, according to Gupta. It’s not clear how the change will affect media outlets’ pages and reach.
Several weeks ago, Epoch Times staff noticed that Facebook appears to have been reducing the reach on its posts. The Epoch Times has reached out to the company for comment. More than a year ago, Facebook banned The Epoch Times and its related pages from advertising and suspended the use of its Instant Articles feature.
“It’s important to note that we’re not removing political content from Facebook altogether. Our goal is to preserve the ability for people to find and interact with political content on Facebook, while respecting each person’s appetite for it at the top of their News Feed,” Gupta said in the post.
During the tests, Facebook said it will “explore a variety of ways to rank political content in people’s feeds using different signals, and then decide on the approaches we’ll use going forward” and added that “COVID-19 information from authoritative health organizations” will not be affected, said Gupta. Meanwhile, “content from official government agencies and services will also be exempt,” the post said.
Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Amazon have all come under fire in recent months for what appears to be a coordinated attempt to stifle conservative voices and other viewpoints outside the mainstream. It’s prompted elected officials, including former President Donald Trump, to suggest revoking Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act that essentially serves as a liability shield.
