Facebook will begin cutting back all political content on its News Feed for specific users, including posts from people's families and friends, as part of a trial to test how the social media giant will rate messages on its website.
Facebook would temporarily decrease political content
On Wednesday, the company said it would temporarily decrease the political content for particular consumers this week in Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, and in the coming weeks, in the United States.
In a blog post, before choosing what strategy to use in the future, Facebook said the trial's point was to test a 'couple of strategies to rate political content in people's feeds.'
All political material, including posts from family and friends, will be expanded by the assessments. It is not necessarily restricted to political news reported by mainstream outlets or political leaders' tweets.
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How Facebook intended to identify political content as part of the survey, how users would be chosen, or how dramatically it would impact their feeds was not immediately clear. Content from official government departments and programs and COVID-19 details from health institutions such as the CDC and WHO would be excluded from the tests.
According to Daily Mail, Facebook claimed that after getting reviews, it is seeking to understand better people's tolerances for the political content they see that consumers don't want those posts to dominate their News Feed.
It comes after Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, said last month that he wanted to "turn down the temperature" of political discussions on the social networking site because "people don't want politics and struggle to take over their experience of our services."
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Facebook said it would no longer refer political-themed communities
He added that Facebook would no longer refer users to political-themed communities and is working on minimizing the volume of political content that its automated systems serve in users' news feeds.
In the blog post on Wednesday, Facebook stated: "It's important to note that we're not removing political content from Facebook altogether."
Facebook is finding ways to play down political content on consumer feeds as it tries to count on its website's role in raising momentum in the January 6 rally that ended with a mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, the social media giant revealed on Wednesday.
The firm had announced it would avoid recommending consumers globally to civic and political organizations, much like before the November 3 election in the United States, the Washington Post reported.
It won't mean that your news feed will be completely apolitical, noted Aastha Gupta, director of Facebook product management. "Our goal is to preserve the ability for people to seek and interact with political content on Facebook, while honoring each person's desire for it at the top of their News Feed," Gupta said.
Afterward, the firm would survey people chosen for the test to see how their social media experience was increased by reducing political content, as per CNET.
