Wall Street Journal: “Facebook said it is beginning to reduce how much political content users see in their news feeds, potentially diminishing the role that the world’s largest social network plays in elections and civil discourse more broadly. The announcement, made in a Wednesday blog post, follows Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s declaration on the company’s earnings call last month that most users wanted to see less political content. He said at the time that cutting back on politics would allow Facebook to ‘do a better job of helping to bring people together and helping to promote healthier communities.’ Facebook says that political content currently constitutes only 6% of what people see on the platform. It will begin running experiments to reduce that amount for a small percentage of people in Canada, Brazil and Indonesia immediately, with tests in the U.S. in weeks to come.”
“The company said it isn’t removing political content but rather exploring ways to reduce the exposure for users who would prefer not to see it. In practice, that means Facebook will still allow users to post about politics and argue among friends, but its algorithms will de-prioritize those conversations and spread them less widely across the network, especially for people who have not expressed interest in those topics.”