The (Updated) Matrix

Recently, an article by Megan Rose Dickey titled "Facebook's latest News Feed update will prioritize trustworthy publishers" explained a coming change to the News Feed of Facebook users. The article described how Facebook will be polling users about which news publishers they had heard about and which they found to be trustworthy to make the news stories that users see more reliable and factual. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that by doing this it is an effort to "encourage meaningful social interactions with family and friends over passive consumption." Facebook's project is starting in the U.S., but the company is hoping to eventually use it for the rest of the world.

I think that it's wonderful that Facebook is attempting to do this. We scroll through our News Feed and see such absurd posts from sites that pretend to be accredited but whose job is to create clickbait articles for the sole purpose of gaining attention and likes. Honest news reporting is not a concern for these sites. These sites can often post incorrect and inappropriate content. The more outrageous and attention-grabbing the article is, the more likely it is to be opened and shared. The publishers are more concerned with how popular their articles are rather than how credible their information is. They don't worry about the readers they are affecting. I believe that for many, just to see that an article has been written leads them to believe the content of the story is accurate.

I can name many instances where I've come across a story that someone has shared, and I found the information within it to be wildly inaccurate. They shared the story because they were amazed by what they had read, or it was a piece that followed their beliefs without first considering where the article had been posted and neglected to do any research to support what the article had mentioned. When I had first noticed ridiculous stories circulating on my News Feed I was annoyed and angry that someone could write such garbage and get paid to do it. I wanted to gather all the information I could and prove the article to be fake. Quickly, I realized that it was impossible to do that for every false news article. The writing and sharing of inaccurate news have happened so frequently that I am no longer surprised to see these wild stories appear on my News Feed. For Facebook to be doing something to lessen the trash and increase credible, news-worthy articles is a big deal and I'm glad it's being done.

With that being said, I'm worried about how they're doing it and have many questions. Will the users I'm friends with have a direct impact on what I'm seeing and their results be the "reliable" news publishers I see or will their polling results be put into a large pool of results nationwide and the reliable sources be pulled from everyone's opinions? How is Facebook conducting the poll? Will they try to poll as many as they can or will they poll users randomly? Do they have a system set in place to ask human users as opposed to corporations or even the untrustworthy news publishers?

Facebook hopes to have the results soon to begin reorganizing content here in the United States and for everyone's sake, my own News Feed especially, I hope the update helps more than it harms.