Facebook made changes to its algorithm after the election to prioritize certain news outlets the company deems more authoritative.
According to a New York Times report, Facebook made the changes in an effort to combat President Trump’s and right-wing media outlets’ claims about election fraud, which the company has labeled “false or misleading.”
The company will now emphasize the importance of what Facebook calls its “news ecosystem quality” score, or “N.E.Q.” N.E.Q. is an internal tool the company uses to assign a ranking to news publishers based on Facebook’s definition of quality journalism.
N.E.Q. typically only plays a minor role in what users see in their Facebook feeds, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg agreed to increase the weight of the metric in the days after the election to prioritize “authoritative news” and “mainstream publishers like CNN, The New York Times, and NPR” over other sources, such as “Breitbart and Occupy Democrats,” employees told the New York Times.
Some of the company’s employees have expressed hope Facebook would make the algorithm changes permanent, even if that might cause people to spend less time on the platform.
“There has never been a plan to make these permanent,” said Guy Rosen, a Facebook executive who is in charge of the company’s “integrity division.”
“There are tensions in virtually every product decision we make and we’ve developed a companywide framework called ‘Better Decisions’ to ensure we make our decisions accurately, and that our goals are directly connected to delivering the best possible experiences for people,” Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne told the New York Times.
Facebook has been under increasing pressure to crack down on misinformation during the 2020 election cycle, causing an internal battle in the company over whether changes result in people using the platform less. Sometimes, Facebook’s crackdowns on misinformation have been bad for business.
“No News Feed product change is ever solely made because of its impact on time spent,” Osborne said.
The company’s decision to censor some information and sources effectively has also led to accusations of political bias at the company. Those accusations led to Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey being called to testify at a Senate hearing on social media censorship.
During the hearing, Sen. Mike Lee accused social media platforms of “taking a very distinctively partisan approach, and not a neutral one, to election-related content moderation.”
Lee said he rejected the notion that social media censorship of stories favoring conservatives were “mistakes.”
“When Facebook employees give 92.8% of their political $ to Dems, & Twitter employees give 99.%, it’s hard to believe that all their ‘mistakes’ silencing conservatives are on accident,” Lee tweeted after the hearing.
Other Republicans joined Lee in criticizing social media companies, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley.
Both Facebook and Twitter have denied prioritizing one viewpoint over another.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a Washington Examiner request for comment.
