Facebook to survey users about which news outlets they find 'trustworthy'

MENLO PARK - Facebook said Friday that it will rank trustworthy, informative and relevant news higher on its News Feed with the help of user surveys.

The move is part of the tech firm's efforts to encourage users to interact more on the social network.

A growing number of Americans have been consuming news on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. But these companies are under more pressure, especially after the U.S. presidential election, to combat the spread of misinformation.

“There's too much sensationalism, misinformation and polarization in the world today,” Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a social media post on Friday. “Social media enables people to spread information faster than ever before, and if we don't specifically tackle these problems, then we end up amplifying them.”

The tech firm will start asking users in surveys if they're familiar with a news source and if they trust it.

“The idea is that some news organizations are only trusted by their readers or watchers, and others are broadly trusted across society even by those who don't follow them directly,” he wrote.

The company announced this month that it would be prioritizing posts from family and friends. As a result, the social network's more than 2 billion users will see fewer posts from businesses and publishers.

With these changes, Facebook expects news to make up roughly 4 percent of News Feed. News currently makes up 5 percent of News Feed.

Facebook said that it's prioritizing news from publications that are trustworthy, informative and relevant to people's local communities.

Americans, though, are already wary of the news they see on social networks. About 5 percent of web-using U.S. adults trust the information from social media a lot, which was lower than the trust they had in national and local media outlets, according to a 2017 study from the Pew Research Center.

Trust in news outlets is also often divided among party lines.

“My hope is that this update about trusted news and last week's update about meaningful interactions will help make time on Facebook time well spent: where we're strengthening our relationships, engaging in active conversations rather than passive consumption, and, when we read news, making sure it's from high quality and trusted sources,” Zuckerberg wrote.