MENLO PARK: Facebook will tentatively show users in several countries fewer posts on political topics. The test is scheduled to start this week in Canada, Brazil and Indonesia and next week in the USA, as the online network announced on Wednesday. The group does not initially comment on whether the trial will be extended to other countries.
Founder and boss Mark Zuckerberg said a few days ago that users didn’t want news and politics to completely take over their timelines. A few years ago, Facebook announced that it would make posts from friends and family more prominent.
In the Corona crisis and around the US presidential election last year, Facebook had warned about false or misleading content. Among other things, information from health organizations such as the CDC in the USA should be excluded from the restriction in the test.
Critics accuse Facebook, among others in the USA, of having contributed to the division of society with algorithms that display similar posts. Facebook emphasized that posts on political topics currently only make up around six percent of the content that users would see on the online network.
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