Advertisement

Facebook says it’s reducing political content for some users in Canada, other countries

FILE PHOTO: A 3D-printed Facebook logo is seen placed on a keyboard in this illustration taken March 25, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it would temporarily reduce political content appearing on New Feeds for some users in Canada, Brazil and Indonesia this week and in the United States within the coming weeks.

Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in January that he wanted to “turn down the temperature” of political conversations on the social networking site because “people don’t want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services.”

The world’s largest social network, which has received flack for not doing enough to remove hateful content from the platform, last month said it would stop recommending civic and political groups to users.

Click to play video: 'Facebook calls for increased content regulation in Canada'
Facebook calls for increased content regulation in Canada

Reducing the frequency of political content will mark initials steps to explore different ways to rank such content in people’s feeds using different signals and understand their preferences, the company said in a blog post.

Story continues below advertisement

Facebook will exempt content from official government agencies and services, as well as COVID-19 information from health organizations from the drill.

(Reporting by Chavi Mehta in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

Sponsored content

AdChoices