New Facebook changes will see conservative news minimized and left wing news dominant

Over the past few weeks, Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has announced a series of changes to the social media site that will impact user’s News Feeds, in what many of us fear will turn Facebook into a extremely powerful Leftist echo chamber.

Some of these changes include prioritising “trustworthy” (liberal/left leaning) news as well as cutting back on public posts that people see in their feeds.

Here’s how some of these changes will affect you.

You’re going to see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and (surprise, surprise) media.

On January 12, Facebook said it will change the way it does business to emphasise “meaningful social interactions”.

“The first changes you’ll see will be in News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups,” Zuckerberg said.

That means you’ll see fewer news items (especially conservative news), and those that you do see will more likely be “trustworthy” (in other words, more liberal/left leaning).

It also said it would put an emphasis on local news sources. Yet, considering that 74 percent of the population of developed nations live in cities, and that the political affiliation of city dwellers is overwhelmingly left wing, it seems the problem of leftist ‘echo chambers’ in cities is only going to get worse.

Mr Zuckerberg has also indicated he will continue to fight what he calls “fake news” by using “member surveys” to identify high-quality outlets and fight sensationalism and misinformation. We all know how that is going to turn out.

It shouldn’t surprise us that the news on Facebook was only called into question after the ridiculous Democrat accusations of Russian operatives spreading false reports on the site during the 2016 US election campaign. Of course, these accusations were shown to be ridiculous and rightly earned the label “fake news”.

It said in September that an operation likely based in Russia spent $100,000 on thousands of ads promoting divisive social and political messages in a two-year-period.

After revealing this news, Facebook said it would remain vigilant and try to keep ahead of people trying to ‘misuse’ the platform.

The company initially proposed fighting false stories by letting users flag them. But it scrapped the red warning icons that would appear next to fake news stories after research suggested it has the opposite effect.

Mr Zuckerberg has also recently said his company felt a responsibility to ensure that their users not only enjoyed the product, but were not being negatively impacted by it.

Mr Zuckerberg said he expects recently announced changes to shrink the amount of news on Facebook by 20 per cent, to about 4 per cent of all content from 5 per cent currently.

It will also affect news stories that you share, Facebook said.

Facebook users will also get to have a say in the trustworthiness of a news outlet after Mr Zuckerberg announced he will use Facebook user surveys to identify high-quality outlets. In other words, they will use Facebook’s monopoly of left-leaning liberals to consistently shutter any news that isn’t seen as ‘progressive’.

“We decided that having the community determine which sources are broadly trusted would be most objective,” Mr Zuckerberg wrote in his post, rejecting the idea that the company rank news outlets’ trustworthiness itself.

However, the move is likely to have a huge impact on the media landscape in nearly every country.

Facebook said that ranking by trustworthiness was not intended to directly impact any specific groups of publishers based on their size or ideology.

The chief executive outlined the shakeup in a post on Facebook, saying that starting next week the News Feed would prioritise “high quality news” over “less trusted sources”. So if previous Facebook actions against Christians and conservatives is anything to go by (see here, here and here), we can expect conservative news content heavily censored and leftist content heavily promoted.