Acting on the feedback given by several groups of users, Facebook will decrease the amount of political content shown in the News Feed, starting with a testing phase of the update which is now live in US for limited users.
Facebook will experiment with several approaches to understand the diverse user preferences over political content, starting by reducing the distribution of political content in News Feed.
The experiments will also include testing various ranking systems and signals used for ranking a piece of content higher or lower in the News Feed.
Information from authoritative health organizations like the CDC and WHO, national and regional health agencies and services from affected countries, and content from government agencies and services will not be a part of the test and will be exempted from reduced distribution.
An important factor that will determine the results of these tests is the user experience, and Facebook will surveying the users who are a part of the test to understand the impact of the changes and the altered experiences.
Political content on Facebook has always remained controversial whether it is about misinformation floating on the platform, Facebook being a preferred platform by extremists who attacked the US Capitol, or the platform's ability to manipulate political dialogue or even a country's elections.
Reducing political content on the platform will also mean decreased chances of the spread of misinformation that may have real-world consequences.
Although the platform also maintains that political content would not be completely wiped out from the platform, the experiments will be about finding a solution to varied preferences to political content.
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