Demoting Low-Quality Content in the News Feed Would Make Conservatives Angry, Employees Said
After surveying users about what kinds of news they found most informative, Facebook’s own News Team proposed ignoring the results of the poll by continuing to boost publishers who posted clickbait, fake news, and things generally no one wanted to read, according to an internal presentation. Users had deemed that type material of low quality. Why did Facebook’s own employees make that recommendation? Because they believed any attempt to improve the quality of information people would result in allegations of censorship by Republicans, according to the document. One employee wrote, “The News team proposed an update to the High Quality News ranking adjustment that increased and improved the effectiveness of the informative component of the score, which is based on asking users how informative they find news content. The launch was blocked primarily based on policy concerns about the effect it had on certain news publishers considered Low Quality by the model, stemming from external criticism from some quarters around perceived anti-conservative bias.”
