Facebook set to curb misuse of groups and spread of political disinformation

In an effort to curb misuse of groups and spread of political disinformation, Facebook announced that it will no longer recommend civic and political pages or news groups to users globally.

The decision was part of the social media company’s efforts to reduce the spread of misinformation on its services. It permanently removed these groups from the US recommendations in January, following the insurrection at the US Capitol on Jan. 6.

According to an official statement by Facebook, the platform will not recommend new groups at all for 21 days. This means that group administrators will have to manually recruit followers. The platform said the purpose of the changes is to slow the reach of political actors looking to use Facebook for harmful purposes.

The changes, as per CNBC, include groups that violate Facebook’s rules will show up lower in recommendations, meaning that users will be less likely to discover them. The platform will display a warning to users when they are about to join a group that has been found to have had community violations. It will reduce the distribution of posts from groups with community violations, and users in these groups will be less likely to see those group’s posts as they scroll through their NewsFeed.

Moreover, when someone sends an invitation to another user to join a group with community violations, the social networking platform will limit these notifications so that users only receive them once. Groups with a substantial number of members who have broken rules will be required to have administrators and moderators approve all posts before they are published. Furthermore, groups with a substantial number of members who were in other groups that were removed for breaking rules will also be required to have administrators and moderators approve all posts before they are published.

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Reports, in 2020, highlighted that the social media giant will make drastic changes to their algorithm to cater toward users and their personal interest while limiting the spread of misinformation. It has come to the fore that some advertisements and campaigns listed deceived users on their rights to votes, the deadline to cast their ballot, and proper steps to ensure their vote is counted.