Sources: after the election, Zuckerberg agreed to temporarily tweak Facebook's algorithm to make authoritative news like CNN and NYT appear more prominently
Good morning! This Wednesday, markets are booming … Charlesarthur / The Overspill : Start Up No.1437: new Honor phones to struggle for chips, UK government accused of blocking FOI, Covid's smart mutation, and more James Farrell / SiliconANGLE : After election, Facebook changed algorithm to highlight authoritative news sources J. Fergus / Input : Facebook could make a nicer news feed, but it would hurt revenue Michael Lee / Washington Examiner : Facebook reveals algorithm changes that prioritize ‘authoritative’ news outlets such as CNN and New York Times Caleb Ecarma / Vanity Fair : Facebook's Post-Election Tweaks Show Zuckerberg Can Curb Misinformation if He Wants Sean Burch / The Wrap : Zuckerberg Changed Facebook Algorithm to Highlight CNN, The New York Times Post-Election Naga Pramod / Reclaim The Net : Zuck personally signed off on algorithm manipulation towards establishment, legacy media Siladitya Ray / Forbes : Report: Facebook Tweaked News Feed After Election Day To Elevate Established News Outlets Carrie Mihalcik / CNET : Facebook reportedly tweaked algorithm to make a ‘nicer news feed’ following US election Tweets: Kevin Roose / @kevinroose : Facebook also ran tests this year to figure out if “bad for the world” content could be demoted in users' feeds. It could, but there was a problem: it decreased the number of times users opened Facebook. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Kevin Roose / @kevinroose : Facebook employees also developed a slate of tools to combat misinformation and “hate bait.” But they ran into opposition from policy executives who feared they would disproportionately impact conservatives. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Timothy B. Lee / @binarybits : According to the NYT, Facebook knows perfectly well how to slow the spread of misinformation on its platform. It has mostly chosen not to do so because the company is run by a sociopath. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Kevin Roose / @kevinroose : A few days after the election, amid a flood of misinformation, Facebook dialed up a publisher quality score known as NEQ to make authoritative news more prominent. Now, employees wonder if the “nicer news feed” can stay. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Donie O'Sullivan / @donie : And some of those folks were never going to accept the facts. Some of them were always going to believe and embrace misinformation. But saying *all* of it wouldn't have happened without Facebook is also ignoring the facts. As @cwarzel shows here. https://www.nytimes.com/... Justin Hendrix / @justinhendrix : Facebook developed but did not implement tools for reducing disinformation and “hate bait” content because it determined the measures mostly impacted right wing users and publishers, reducing engagement, report @kevinroose, @MikeIsaac and @sheeraf: https://www.nytimes.com/... @monteiro : It is difficult to get a billionaire to understand something when remaining a billionaire depends upon his not understanding it. https://twitter.com/... Tim Wise / @timjacobwise : So basically Facebook is afraid to let right wingers know they lie more than other people, or fall for bullshit because their brains are broken...so they (meaning Facebook) allow lies and bullshit to spread all because they're afraid of being called liberal... https://twitter.com/... Jesse Singal / @jessesingal : Don't worry guys if Facebook chosses to adjust its secret weighting system, based in part on a secret internal indicator of news-outlet quality, in a manner that might harm its own bottom line, fewer conspiracy theories will be spread. It's a good system! https://www.nytimes.com/... Michael McDonald / @electproject : Related, why Republicans will likely fare better in the 2022 midterms under President Biden: complacent Democrats will more often think all is well https://twitter.com/... @monteiro : BTW: Props to the workers who actually TRIED here. But you are trying to fix a product that management doesn't see as broken. https://twitter.com/... David Roberts / @drvox : The fundamental & unsolvable dilemma facing any institution, public or private, that seeks to maintain epistemic standards: enforced neutrally & dispassionately, any real standards will fall disproportionately on the right, which lies more. It's politically untenable. https://twitter.com/... Zach Carter / @zachdcarter : from now on, when I say “break up” facebook, i mean physically break up every piece of machinery the company owns or operates with a sledgehammer https://www.nytimes.com/... Marshall Steinbaum / @econ_marshall : Every tech platform has set out to show why we regulated the industries they each “disrupted” with regulatory arbitrage in the first place. https://twitter.com/... Kevin Roose / @kevinroose : New by me, @MikeIsaac and @sheeraf: a post-election look inside Facebook, where internal battles are raging about how to balance the sometimes-incompatible goals of growth and goodness. https://www.nytimes.com/... Can Duruk / @can : It's just possible that Zuck is as big a scourge on society as Trump ever was. https://twitter.com/... Ben Shapiro / @benshapiro : Not at all shocking. And perfectly predictable, given that the establishment media leveraged their pull in order to bully social media to re-establish their monopoly on informational distribution. https://twitter.com/... Josh Hawley / @hawleymo : .@Facebook throttling conservative outlets to decrease their readership ... #BigTech wants to control all news in America and soon will if we don't stop them https://twitter.com/... Molly Jong-Fast / @mollyjongfast : We don't spend enough time talking about how Mark Zuckerberg is an evil monster. https://twitter.com/... @nytimestech : A debate about a temporary change to the news feed illustrates a central tension that some inside Facebook are feeling acutely these days: that the company's aspirations of improving the world are often at odds with its desire for dominance. https://www.nytimes.com/... Ellen K. Pao / @ekp : We always knew it was possible to combat hate and misinformation—nowhere near as hard as Facebook made it seem. Now we know that Facebook actually has built a whole set of tolls for dealing with hate and misinformation but chooses not to use it https://twitter.com/... Sarah Reese Jones / @politicussarah : Facebook policy execs thought combatting hate bait would disproportionately target conservatives. Because it would. And what does that say. https://twitter.com/... Mcc / @mcclure111 : The reason why Ted Cruz keeps dragging social CEOs into hearings to yell at them is to produce exactly this kind of effect https://twitter.com/... Ken Schwencke / @schwanksta : Something we intuitively know, but good to see so plainly: Facebook monetizes your anger, and removing content that materially makes the world worse is a threat to its bottom line. https://twitter.com/... Alex Hern / @alexhern : Something I think is under-discussed is how America's toxic politics harms the rest of the world through nonsense like this. https://twitter.com/... Alex Hern / @alexhern : The largest social network in the UK has ineffectual tools to combat misinformation despite huge cross-partisan support for them because the extremist ruling party in the US gets to define the “centre ground” Ellen K. Pao / @ekp : Advertisers should refuse to buy Facebook ads shown next to “bad for the world” content, especially since Facebook has a whole metric that measures it https://twitter.com/... @blackamazon : So again the racism is couched in “right wing” and the reports about how targeting Black women and how that metastasized out, but we're ignored for years ? Keep getting shrouded in “left right” . Facebook was RACIST because racism is misinformation and it's still here https://twitter.com/... Matthew Zeitlin / @mattzeitlin : Facebook essentially uses disparate impact analysis for adjustments to the news feed with conservatives as a protected class https://twitter.com/... Adam Serwer / @adamserwer : Perfectly happy to throttle traffic to liberal outlets for being liberal though. So it's not that they are trying to be neutral. https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/... Nate Silver / @natesilver538 : One thing that's striking here is the extent to which Facebook is maximizing for short-term, measurable gains as opposed to long-term brand equity. A better news feed could result in more trust from readers, more partnerships with news organizations, higher internal morale, etc. https://twitter.com/... Jack Nicas / @jacknicas : Another change would've retroactively told users that they had shared misinfo but execs rejected it because they feared it would disproportionately affect people who shared posts from right-wing pages. There are plenty more examples in the piece. https://www.nytimes.com/... Jack Nicas / @jacknicas : A Facebook spokesman told my colleagues: “No News Feed product change is ever solely made because of its impact on time spent.” He said that people who spoke to my colleagues had no decision-making authority. Here's the story. Read it for yourself: https://www.nytimes.com/... Jack Nicas / @jacknicas : This is far from the only example of execs rejecting changes that were good for the world but bad for FB. A new algorithm that reduced the visibility of posts that users would consider “bad for the world” also lowered Facebook usage. So it was rejected. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Jack Nicas / @jacknicas : But then Facebook changed it back. Look at the results. Here are the top-performing posts on Facebook just before the election, about a week after the election, and three days after that. For a few days, the world got a tase of a “nicer news feed,” as some FB workers called it https://twitter.com/... Jack Nicas / @jacknicas : Facebook executives said the change was always intended to be temporary. But that decision upset some employees, illustrating a central tension inside the company: Facebook's goal of improving the world is often at odds with its desire for dominance. https://www.nytimes.com/... David Kaye / @davidakaye : facebook is not a state, nor a charity, but a corporate behemoth that should stick to basics: avoid causing harm, protect rights. excellent @sheeraf @MikeIsaac @kevinroose story abt a company seemingly always struggling, with itself, to get it right. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Pui-Wing Tam / @puiwingtam : Inside the push-pull at Facebook over reducing misinformation and the effect on the amount of time people spend on the site. FB even surveyed users over what they might see as “bad for the world” posts. Fine work by @kevinroose @MikeIsaac @sheeraf https://www.nytimes.com/... Sheera Frenkel / @sheeraf : NEW- Remember after the election when Facebook's newsfeed suddenly seemed... nicer? That was no accident. It was Facebook cranking the levers and showing us what NewsFeed could look like if they tweaked their algorithms. Story with @kevinroose @MikeIsaac https://www.nytimes.com/... Jeff Hauser / @jeffhauser : I wonder what role Facebook's Regulatory Policy Director played in this? https://twitter.com/... Colin Jones / @colinjones : This is an abject dereliction of responsibility from Facebook and should really piss people off https://www.nytimes.com/... Melissa Ryan / @melissaryan : Once again Facebook chose engagement over reducing hate and disinformation on the platform. #ShockedNotShocked https://twitter.com/... Mark Little / @marklittlenews : In which we glimpse “a vision of what a calmer, less divisive Facebook might look like” https://www.nytimes.com/... Jesse Lehrich / @jesselehrich : .@Facebook built tools to ‘correct the record’ on misinfo & limit ‘hate bait’ — but leadership nixed both to avoid angering the right. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Cat Zakrzewski / @cat_zakrzewski : This article raises the key question: Why isn't Facebook penalizing repeat purveyors of misinformation? The company did not comment when @sheeraf asked. https://twitter.com/... Scott Austin / @scottmaustin : We need a better disinfectant for disinformation. https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : Good report. The kicker states one individual, a key source of unsupported election fraud claims, received 3x the Facebook interactions as Washington Post and The New York Times combined for the hashtag. https://twitter.com/... Shira Ovide / @shiraovide : Hello, this is why accounts with high engagement matter. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the third act in a long-running pattern: back in 2016, Facebook executives privately worried about the company's role in influencing elections while Zuckerberg publicly downplayed the impact (execs voiced concerns in an all-hands), and the 2018 News Feed overhaul already framed 'authoritative' ranking as the fix (Motherboard argued those changes helped media long-term). What changed now is that the fix became explicit and personal — sources say Zuckerberg himself signed off on a temporary post-election boost for outlets like CNN and The New York Times.
The word 'temporarily' is doing the work: Facebook is admitting its default ranking was not good enough for a high-stakes moment, and that restoring it is the plan.
First-order effects
- Publishers like CNN and NYT see elevated distribution during the post-election window, while lower-ranked outlets lose reach for as long as the tweak stays live.
- Facebook employees who pushed for a 'nicer' news feed gain an internal precedent — leadership demonstrably willing to override the standard algorithm under pressure.
Second-order effects
- Conservative critics who already allege platform bias — the same camp behind Republicans' lawsuit over Google's Gmail spam filter — get fresh evidence that rankings can be manually adjusted, sharpening the bias-claims argument against Facebook.
- Rival platforms face the same dilemma: intervene visibly and invite bias accusations, or leave rankings untouched and absorb blame for what surfaces.
Third-order effects
- If 'temporary' tweaks become the recurring response to each crisis, platform neutrality becomes openly conditional — ranking decisions made by executive fiat rather than stated policy, which is exactly the terrain regulators and the Clarity Act negotiators are circling.
- News publishers' economics stay hostage to Facebook's discretionary switches: a boost granted after one election can be withdrawn after the next, keeping the industry dependent on uncontracted favor.
The trend: Platform governance is drifting from fixed algorithmic rules toward episodic, executive-approved overrides at politically sensitive moments — a shift that invites both regulatory scrutiny and permanent accusations of bias.