Facebook is mulling how it prioritizes news stories in users' feeds — giving better placement to outlets it sees as more trustworthy and weed out fake news, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Journal, citing unnamed sources, reported the new approach involves evaluating things like public polling about news outlets, and whether readers are willing to pay for news from particular publishers.
Such variable would then go into its algorithm that determines which publishers' posts are pushed higher in the feed, the Journal reported.
The social media giant is also planning changes in how it handles video — giving priority to those that users engage with and playing down those that generate views by automatically playing when seen in a person's feed.
It is also looking to double down on a strategy of promoting content shared by friends and family over posts published by news outlets, the Journal reported.
The moves have some publishers concerned.
"We're losing hope," one told Digitday.com, which also reported details of the plan Thursday.
Some publishers believe the changes will cause a more dramatic decline in their ability to reach audiences in the news feed, Digitday reported.
"They're breaking the bad news one by one," one unnamed source told that outlet. "My impression is they're going to move away from what we think of as Facebook videos."
The Journal noted the moves are in line with chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's effort to keep Facebook from taking on editorial responsibilities — and minimize the spread of false information without becoming the "arbiters of truth."
For example, Facebook has joined with fact-checkers like PolitiFact and Snopes, and has launched features like "related articles" to get readers to dive deeper into an issue.
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