Content identified as misleading or problematic has been mistakenly highlighted on Facebook users’ feeds in recent months, due to a computer problem that took six months to fix, according to the specialized site The Verge.
The article published on Thursday “greatly exaggerates the magnitude of the bug which in the end had no significant or long-term impact on the problematic content“, reacted Joe Osborne, a spokesman for Meta, the parent company of Facebook.
According to The Verge, engineers from the group wrote an internal report stating that “massive ranking failure“content.
The overwhelming majority of News Feed content cannot be downgraded
They noticed in October that News Feed algorithms were broadcasting certain content identified as questionable more widely by external media, members of the “Third party fact-checking“, the verification program developed by Facebook.
“Unable to find the cause of the problem, the engineers saw the wave drop a few weeks later before it resurfaced several times until this ranking problem was fixed on March 11.“, details the article.
But according to Joe Osborne, the incident only involved one “very low number of views“.
“The overwhelming majority of News Feed content cannot be downgraded“, he explained, adding that the other mechanisms designed to avoid exposing users to content said “harmful“had stayed in place – like”other downgrades, fact-checking warnings, and withdrawals“.
AFP participates in more than 80 countries and 24 languages in the “Third party fact-checking“. With this program, which started in December 2016, Facebook pays more than 80 media around the world for the use of their “fact-checks” on its platform, on WhatsApp and on Instagram.
If something is diagnosed as false or misleading by one of these outlets, users are less likely to see it appear in their News Feed.
And if they see it or try to share it, the platform suggests that they read the verification article. Those who had already shared the information receive a notification redirecting to the article. There are no deletions of posts. The participating media are totally free in the choice and treatment of their subjects.
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