Facebook has made a ton of changes to its platform over the past couple of years, in an effort to fight fake news and misinformation. Now it is rating users based on their trustworthiness. According to Facebook’s Tessa Lyons, who revealed this to the Washington Post. It is going to be rating users on a zero-to-one scale. The reason behind this is to help fight fake news, as it can flag users who routinely make false claims against news outlets. Lyons also mentions that this isn’t the only way Facebook is gauging credibility. There are thousands of ways that Facebook is doing this.
As expected, Lyons did not go into specifics on how the score is calculated. Lyons argued that this could essentially make this new system worthless for them, as “bad actors” could figure out how the scoring is done and manipulate it. But on the other hand, this could affect what users see and from who, on their timeline and so forth. Which is already a pretty complex algorithm that Facebook changes pretty routinely. This new system actually contradicts what founder, Mark Zuckerberg had said in recent interviews. Essentially saying that it’s tough to gauge intent in every little thing that a user posts across its platform. That is also similar to what Twitter’s Jack Dorsey said in recent days as well.
This system is mostly going to be a behind-the-scenes thing. Your score isn’t going to be public, but it could really impact what you see on the site. The whole reason for these changes is to help combat fake news. This is because, many people get their news from Facebook these days. And where anyone can post anything, and someone will believe it. That makes fake news run pretty rampant on Facebook and other platforms. And it’s forcing these social media platforms to adjust how the platforms work. This new scoring system may not work out for Facebook, but it also might help them fight misinformation.