Facebook to weigh user feedback to reduce political content

Facebook will weigh negative user feedback to reduce political content in the platform’s News Feed, the company said Tuesday. 

The announcement is part of Facebook’s updates to its previously announced plan to cut down on political content. 

Since initiating the effort in February, Facebook has learned that “some engagement signals” are better at indicating what posts users find valuable, according to the Tuesday update. 

Based on what the platform has learned, Facebook will be “putting more emphasis” on signals such as how likely users are to provide negative feedback on posts about political topics and current events when ranking those types of posts in their News Feed, the company said. 

The company will also test putting less emphasis on signals such as how likely a user is to comment on or share political content. The update comes a couple of weeks after Facebook released data on its most “widely viewed” content and downplayed the significance of engagement on posts as the primary source of data to view activity on the platform. 

Facebook said Tuesday the changes may impact traffic to publishers. The company is planning a “gradual and methodical” rollout for tests using the new signals. 

Facebook is also expanding its tests to reduce political content in News Feed to Costa Rica, Sweden, Spain and Ireland.