Here’s how Facebook chooses which stories go to your news feed

Facebook is extremely capable of adapting to your needs. The social media giant has changed privacy settings on every possible level and customised its News Feed to read your feed, whether you’re in your bedroom or next to a body of water. It’s getting so good at personalisation that Facebook has changed the way it figures which photos should be published to the News Feed.

That’s why there’s been a feeling that Facebook has become lazy in its approach to how it handles community complaints. Take this leaked document – reportedly drawn up by Facebook staff last year and published by Gizmodo on Tuesday – which shows a ten-page section on dealing with defamation complaints on the social network.

The document is titled “How do we respond to verbatim public postings?” and offers the method that Facebook might use to respond to private claims. While some of the methods listed – for example, adding a link to the offending article or taking the matter to a court of law – sound reasonable, some of the others are a little niggling. It’d be nice to know how the company handles defamation complaints where citizens of one country tell Facebook that someone made them feel shabby – instead of having it decide if the story was true or not.

Of course, the document doesn’t mention if Facebook will take users’ posts down if they do decide that the case is a hoax. Right now the social network shares content regardless of whether it is fake news or genuine, and has previously responded to requests by banning fake news with an “acceptable use policy”.

Further reading: the most popular and bizarrely compelling Facebook pages

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