Same fight, different day
Facebook fights spammers once again with the new update they rolled out last week.
Facebook has been under fire for being a leading platform for fake news ever since last year’s election. Though Mark Zuckerberg vehemently denies the abundance of fake content, the company is taking strides to ensure that his claims ring true. They announced last Wednesday that over the next couple of months a new update will ensure that “low quality websites” will dissipate from user’s newsfeed, making way for more substantial content and ads.
Low quality subjectivity
So what qualifies as a “low quality website?” According to Facebook, these are pages that are “misleading, sensational and spammy.” Just think about how many times you scroll down to see ads boasting “How to Shed 20lbs in Two Days” in your current newsfeed.
Facebook is taking it a step further than clickbait though.
In order to rank certain websites, they evaluated content on thousands of sites and developed an algorithm to verify their substance. Once they determined if the content or ads were “disruptive, shocking or malicious,” they used AI technology to find similar pages on their platform.
After being marked as low quality, these sites will appear lower on users’ newsfeed and no longer be considered an ad.
In essence, Facebook hopes that this new ranking system will provide users with more informative and substantial content.
This is not the first time Facebook has promised to eliminate spam on their platform. They developed a similar strategy when dealing with clickbait that included a scoring system.
However, this is a step forward as the company is now reviewing content that users see.
They are going a step further in the process to determine what content is valuable on a website after users click on it.
Not a cure-all
Does this mean that spam will be gone from Facebook? No. Just because the social media platform promised to bring more informative content, does not mean that all fake news or spammy ads will be eliminated.
As long as the internet exists, there will always be a place for misleading content. At least Facebook is trying to send statement against it.
#FacebookSpam
