Facebook to survey users to measure trust in publications, data will affect News Feed rankings; news will make up 4% of News Feed posts, down from 5%

Tech giant will rely on user surveys of trustworthiness to try to preserve objectivity — Facebook Inc. FB .33% plans to start ranking news sources …

Wall Street Journal 2018-01-21 Deepa Seetharaman

Context & Ripple Effects

Facebook is outsourcing editorial judgment to its users: instead of hiring raters or relying on fact-checkers alone, it will ask people which publications they recognize and trust and feed those answers into News Feed rankings — a shift that also cuts news from 5% to 4% of Feed posts. The mechanics are strikingly thin: the survey asks just two questions about recognition and trust per domain.

The move lands amid immediate pressure for transparency — The Atlantic's follow-up demanded Facebook explain how surveys are designed, whether media can contest their rank, and whether user ideology factors in. And the trust-survey approach didn't stay confined to news: months later Facebook was scoring the trustworthiness of individual users, extending the same logic to the people answering.

First-order effects

Publishers' News Feed reach now depends partly on audience sentiment rather than engagement signals alone — outlets with low name recognition or low trust scores lose distribution even if their stories perform.
The simultaneous cut of news to 4% of Feed posts means publishers face a smaller pie and a re-ranked slice at the same time.

Second-order effects

Publications are pushed toward brand-building over clickbait, since recognition is a survey input — but outlets serving niche audiences may be structurally penalized because few respondents recognize them.
The methodology gap The Atlantic flagged invites external scrutiny of how rankings are computed, forcing Facebook to either disclose more or absorb accusations that ideology shapes the results.

Third-order effects

Trust becomes platform infrastructure: what began as a publisher-ranking survey generalizes into per-user trustworthiness scores and, eventually, the global ranking-feedback tests Facebook was still running in 2021 — audience perception hardening into an algorithmic input across content types.
If recognition-weighted trust becomes the standard ranking signal, news distribution consolidates around big brands, reshaping which outlets can survive on social referral traffic.

The trend: Platforms are replacing explicit editorial curation with crowd-sourced trust signals that quietly become core ranking infrastructure.

Discussion

Vox Aja Romano on x
Facebook now plans to let users decide which news sources are the most “trustworthy”
@zeynep Zeynep Tufekci on x
Just catching up with the Facebook announcement about trusted news sources. That “the” is doing a lot of work here. http://www.facebook.com/... http://twitter.com/...
@avsa Alex Van De Sande on x
Data can find out a person is pregnant before their family, via buying patterns. Facebook knows when you're about to break up with a boyfriend or when you're depressed. Yet the best algorithm they can to figure out what's real news is basically popular vote? http://twitter.com/..…
@robertmackey Robert Mackey on x
Sadly Facebook defines the problem as finding news sources that are “broadly trusted” rather than worthy of trust. One is an opinion that can be surveyed, the other is a fact that requires judgement to discern; surveys can be processed by computers, judgements require humans. htt…
@borzou Borzou Daragahi on x
Just hire real journalists http://twitter.com/...
@kat_b_hawkins Kathleen Hawkins on x
“We do not plan to release individual publishers' trust scores because they represent an incomplete picture of how each story's position in each person's feed is determined.” (Via @DaveLeeBBC ) http://www.bbc.co.uk/...
@chrizap Chris Zappone on x
This went live Friday afternoon in US. @facebook to crowdsource news truthworthiness. Again, trying to engineer a solution to a social/political problem. Is Zuckerberg aware POTUS, and followers, are waging a war on real media? http://www.facebook.com/... http://twitter.com/...
@sub8u Subrahmanyam KVJ on x
It's 2018. Let's just accept that fancy words of yesteryears - crowdsourcing, User-generated content, and the like - are great theoretical concepts with limited practical at-scale benefits. http://twitter.com/...
@amyxzh Amy X Zhang on x
My concern about this strategy is that people have very different ideas about what is trustworthy. Aggregates hide a lot of variation. Why should everyone by bound by a survey of a small population? http://www.wsj.com/...
@marshallk Marshall Kirkpatrick on x
I'll tell you what's trustworthy when it comes to US news: outlets that employ a lot of Black people. People of Color. How could an organization be trustworthy to cover news about America otherwise? http://www.techmeme.com/...
@marshallk Marshall Kirkpatrick on x
How many points do you get added per Pulitzer Prize won? http://www.techmeme.com/...
@jeffbercovici Jeff Bercovici on x
Official Most Trusted News Sources: 1. Boaty McBoatface 2. Tay the racist chatbot 3. Logan Paul 4. Infowars/Oprah (tie) http://twitter.com/...
@noahpinion Noah Smith on x
All information ecosystems need quality filters to be valuable. Better sooner than later. http://www.wsj.com/...
@dseetharaman Deepa Seetharaman on x
Updated story with some deets on how $FB got here & how it might affect small publishers. “No one signal that we use is perfect. There's always examples of when [the results] aren't lining up with what we're intending.” http://www.wsj.com/...
@sarahcuda Sarah Lacy on x
this seems like a way to create more division and gaming of the truth. i don't get this move. at all. http://twitter.com/...
@davmicrot David Rothschild on x
Finally @Facebook doing something about news consumption that is not ex-ante stupid, but devil is in the details http://www.wsj.com/...
@jbenton Joshua Benton on x
Zuckerberg says the news share of News Feed will now drop from 5% to 4%. I wonder what it was at Peak Facebook Traffic Monsoon circa 2014 — 10%? http://newsroom.fb.com/...
@aarti411 Aarti Shahani on x
BREAKING: Facebook is going to highlight news from “trusted sources” and push down content that comes from less known news sources. Obviously, to decide what “trusted” means is an editorial decision. @NPR http://www.facebook.com/...
@caseynewton Casey Newton on x
A 1-point decline is significant but suggest last week's “Facebook is done with journalism” hot takes were wildly overstated http://twitter.com/...
@mosseri Adam Mosseri on x
I'm excited about the our announcement today to improve the quality of news in News Feed. We're going to value news from sources that are broadly trusted by the people that use our platform more, and stories from sources that are distrusted less. Details: http://newsroom.fb.com/.…
@kia_mak Kia Makarechi on x
This would be encouraging if . . . Facebook's users hadn't already proven themselves wildly incapable of determining the credibility of news stories and sources http://www.wsj.com/... http://twitter.com/...
@noupside Renee DiResta on x
This is great news and a long time coming. Google has been ranking for quality for a long time, it's a bit baffling how long it took for social networks to get there. The survey bit is interesting (I hope it's not a sharable survey) http://www.wsj.com/...
@willoremus Will Oremus on x
Mark Zuckerberg continues to confuse “intersubjective” for “objective.” http://www.facebook.com/... http://twitter.com/...
@pt Parker on x
FB still desperately wants an elegant / neutral solution to editorial that doesn't exists. We should not be shocked when users mark their fav propaganda source as untrustworthy & journalism their sources attack as untrustworthy. http://www.wsj.com/...
@mattnavarra Matt Navarra on x
Zuck wasn't kidding when he said he was going to fix things in 2018... He's moving fast. http://twitter.com/...
@kevinwglass @kevinwglass on x
I would be curious if Facebook's method of determining news source trustworthiness (http://www.facebook.com/...) is meaningfully different than Pew's http://twitter.com/...
@mike_hogan Mike Hogan on x
I have told Facebook they should mix expert and user scores, and make it all transparent to the user (and publisher) http://twitter.com/...
@walldo Brandon Wall on x
Speaking as someone who has spent three years babysitting growing audience trust in an emerging news brand people have heavy preconceived notions about, this seems like a bad idea http://twitter.com/...
@jaspar Jason Emory Parker on x
A tremendous amount of brainpower and resources will be devoted to gaming and manipulating this system. Is Facebook prepared for that? http://twitter.com/...
@jason_kint Jason Kint on x
More clearly, helping Facebook with some math, Facebook will be reducing the amount of News in news feed by 20%. http://twitter.com/...
@jonathanstray @jonathanstray on x
We wanted to tear down the gatekeepers, and we did. Now we're building them back up again, because it turns out authority is useful. http://www.wsj.com/...
@mdudas Mike Dudas on x
Lol, can't wait for Facebook users to rate @TMZ quality higher than @TheEconomist http://www.wsj.com/...
@nathanjurgenson @nathanjurgenson on x
“having the community determine which sources are broadly trusted” is how news has always worked on facebook :( http://www.facebook.com/...
@jeffjarvis Jeff Jarvis on x
Now Zuckerberg says Facebook will link to news but will make judgments about quality. Good. But it won't be easy. We in journalism will need to help. http://www.facebook.com/...
@tomgara Tom Gara on x
This sounds like extremely good news for news publishers that aren't hated by one side or the other. http://www.wsj.com/...
@ashleyfeinberg Ashley Feinberg on x
facebook spent the past three years gaslighting the entire country and breaking everyone's brains, and now that we're all ruined and incapable of assessing reality, facebook has decided that this is the time to let the shrieking idiots take the wheel http://newsroom.fb.com/... ht…
@mosseri Adam Mosseri on x
This change won't effect an unknown publisher's direct distribution, but often problematic content spreads as other publications, sometimes untrusted ones, re-share it, which this change would does effect. It's also worth saying that this is only a part of our integrity efforts.
@tvietor08 Tommy Vietor on x
Congratulations in advance to Fox News, RT and Sputnik. http://twitter.com/...
@daveleebbc Dave Lee on x
UPDATE: Facebook spox tells BBC the news org ranking will not be made public, so it'll be anyone's guess which orgs are being promoted (or demoted) on the basis of trust.
@daveleebbc Dave Lee on x
2/ Contrary to some takes I've read so far, I don't think the concept of Facebook using the wisdom of the crowd is a bad one. They said they'd sample everyone and determine which orgs have a broad trust over various groups. That's a good idea.
@daveleebbc Dave Lee on x
FB: “This is one of many signals that go into News Feed ranking. We do not plan to release individual publishers' trust scores because they represent an incomplete picture of how each story's position in each person's feed is determined.”
@cwarzel Charlie Warzel on x
Some quick thoughts on the Facebook decision to punt the existential issue facing its platform to...its 2 billion users: https://www.buzzfeed.com/... pic.twitter.com/Munyc0aAD6
@b_fung Brian Fung on x
It really isn't clear from the blog post what that would mean. Would users across Facebook start seeing Infowars more often? Just Infowars fans? How does this address filter-bubble concerns? What's to stop people from downvoting trustworthy outlets for the lulz?
@jayrosen_nyu Jay Rosen on x
What I heard Zuck saying is FB will rely more on trust rankings from those who are not core users, or “fans” and don't have the same investment.
@mathewi Mathew Ingram on x
The problem, of course, is that the question of trust in journalism or media is inherently ideological — some will say Breitbart or Fox are trustworthy, because to them they are https://www.cjr.org/...
@tonyromm Tony Romm on x
here's the thing — designing the survey is going to require facebook to make the sort of editorial choices that it's trying to avoid. because if it doesn't include some of these outlets, you better believe Congress will come for it — which literally happened on Wednesday http://t…

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