A2D Consulting Digital Update - Facebook

Facebook has announced two major changes to its News Feed as it seeks to essentially crowdsource its trust rankings for news sources.  Facebook will begin surveying users to determine the trustworthiness of publishers, and it will decrease how much news is in the News Feed from 5% to 4%. The survey will help Facebook determine the ranking of the News Feed, and will consist of two questions: Do you recognize the following websites? How much do you trust each of these domains? The goal is to effectively decrease the number of news articles on users' news feeds and attempt to ensure the remaining news articles are trust worthy. 

Facebook has been at the center of many conversations regarding the unexpected negative consequences of social media after news that Russian Propaganda intended to disrupt the United States Presidential Elections in 2016 may have been shown to 140 million Americans. The number of exposed Americans was much larger than the initial projects of 10 million, and represents a staggeringly large percentage of the 214 million total Facebook users residing in the United States. Facebook has also announced plans to increase the number of employees actively working on ensuring the integrity of public elections.

Facebook is the second largest ad revenue (close to $27 billion last year) platform in the world, and accounts for nearly 20% of global advertising when combined with Google (around $79 billion in ad revenue). 



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