Meta, a popular human-curated news app, recently announced they will discontinue their human-curated news stories on Facebook globally. This decision comes after months of criticism towards the company’s reliance on human editors to curate news stories. Many have argued that this could spread fake news and biases that could influence readers.
Let’s examine why Meta has chosen to ditch human-curated news stories on Facebook and what implications this may have on the industry.
What is Meta?
Meta is a news platform that brings readers stories from around the world – all evaluated by experienced editors for accuracy, objectivity, and relevance. It combines algorithmic curation with a human-centric approach to data processing, aiming to deliver an informative and balanced perspective of global events to readers everywhere.
The mission of Meta has always been to provide readers access to reliable news sources to combat “fake news”. As such, they employ blue-chip software tools like AI technology and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to filter, rank, and present one thousand plus news stories per day. After evaluation by their team of editors, these approved stories are then sent out through social media channels including Facebook News Feeds across the globe.
Unfortunately, recent events have posed an unforeseen challenge to their mission of delivering verified content– causing Meta founders to stop relying on their editorial team and shift towards 100% algorithmic curation for all Facebook News Stories.
What is the issue?
The issue is that Meta, a human-curated news platform, has decided to drop the content sourced from Facebook News globally. This announcement follows similar decisions made by Meta in Australia and the U.K., where the platform similarly opted not to offer any stories sourced from Facebook News. The platform’s choice to abandon human-curated Facebook News stories was informed by the company’s concern for user trust and safety due to concerns over the limited moderation on the larger social media outlet.
Since such an announcement has been made regarding this highly contentious topic stirring controversy across both digital and traditional media outlets alike, it is important to understand why Meta intends to stop offering these specific types of stories in its feeds, as well as what ripple effects could result from this decision when put into practice.
History of Meta and Facebook News
Meta and Facebook News have had a long and complicated relationship. Meta, a firm specializing in curation and personalization technology, first began collaborating with the social media giant in 2016, when they launched a pilot project in six countries. This was later extended to other countries and regions, allowing Meta to curate and organize news stories for Facebook users.
However, recent news reports state that Meta is now set to ditch human-curated Facebook News stories globally. Let’s take a look at how things got to this point.
Meta’s partnership with Facebook
Meta is a company which, since its founding in 2014, has been providing personalized news and information to its users. Until recently, it had relied on human- curated stories from Facebook News to bring people informative and relevant stories based on their interests. But now, Meta is ditching this approach globally in favor of algorithm-driven personalization.
In 2019, the company announced partnering with Facebook to incorporate its proprietary algorithms into Meta’s personalized news engine. The goal was for Meta’s machine learning system to learn from users’ interests and preferences and track their browsing behavior on third-party sites like Twitter and Instagram. This would enable Meta’s algorithm to better personalize the types of stories its customers received from Facebook News – resulting in an even more tailored experience for its users.
However, earlier this year the two companies ended their partnership altogether – citing financial challenges due to falling ad revenue caused by the ongoing global pandemic. As a result of these challenges, Meta will be removing all human-curated content from Facebook News stories within its platform going forward – making it the first global news provider to exclusively offer AI-driven personalized news curation instead.
Meta’s human-curated news stories
Meta has been providing a personalized Facebook News experience for about a year, and it’s seemingly been successful enough that the company is now ready to make this the default option for its users. The company’s human-curated news stories have been viewed thousands of times by users, and its goal was to provide relevant and timely information that would make the reader feel more informed. Meta relied on editors who manually curated news stories from various sources to do this.
Meta’s editors looked for stories with interesting context and compelling narratives to give readers an inside look into their topic area of choice. Stories were manually selected based on the criteria such as relevance, quality, timeliness and importance, instead of being algorithmically generated like other companies do. Consequently, those who followed Meta could gain insight into important topics or happenings in the world with articles hand-picked by people who understood the nuances behind each topic.
However, despite Meta’s success in providing quality content through human-curated news stories, Facebook recently announced its decision to stop relying on content Curators worldwide. This means that even though Meta is ditching human-curated news stories globally, it still intends to continue offering personalized Facebook News experiences tailored specifically to users’ interests and activities.
Reasons for Ditching Human-Curated News
With the growing number of fake news and misinformation circulating on the internet, companies like Meta are beginning to shift away from curating news stories on social media platforms like Facebook.
In this article, we will discuss Meta’s decision to ditch human-curated news stories globally and the reasons behind it.
The rise of automated algorithms
With the rise of automated algorithms, algorithms are increasingly used to select content for distribution, allowing technology to curate news and other content faster and more efficiently than humans.
Meta, a tech company that helps media companies run their digital businesses, recently announced it was ditching its human-curated Facebook News stories globally. Instead of having journalists comb through story submissions and choose the most relevant ones for its partners’ sites, Meta will use automated algorithms to identify which stories reach more readers.
The decision has been met with mixed reactions from the industry since humans are known for evaluating stories better than a machine ever could. However, there is also fear surrounding automation such as whether these technologies can handle journalistic integrity by avoiding bias in selecting stories or by creating fairness between newsrooms of different sizes.
Meta says its algorithm offers “enhanced flexibility over manual curation in terms of coming up with curated content faster” and yielding “more comprehensive and tailored stories that deliver higher engagement among their users” whenever they post links on Facebook. Additionally, automated algorithms can make decisions quicker than humans based on data they analyze such as traffic trends.
Increase in fake news
With an increasing number of fake news being circulated online and shared on social media, it’s becoming a major issue for content aggregation platforms, like Meta. While the company has made efforts to determine the source and validity of each story, it has come to recognize that relying on human curation is no longer enough. As such, Meta has announced its decision to stop using human-curated News stories globally to tackle the rise of fake news.
Using artificial intelligence (AI) is the primary way Meta will address this problem. The AI-driven algorithm automatically sorts through hundreds of thousands of stories each day. It selects only those most closely related to users’ interests based on their profile information. This results in accurate and more relevant content in users’ feeds and helps prevent misinformation from spreading quickly. Additionally, as technology continues to improve and become more sophisticated, AI can be relied upon even more so than humans to identify and diagnose false stories.
By switching over from traditional human-curated platforms for relaying news stories to one powered by AI algorithms that are constantly updated with the latest data points, Meta is looking towards a future where trust in digital media can be established again.
Cost-effectiveness
Human-curated stories on Facebook News can be costly and time-consuming to source. Machine learning can find the same stories much more cost-effectively and efficiently. Additionally, machine learning is more likely to detect changes quicker, which is helpful for reporting on events as they unfold in real time.
Meta announced its decision to use machine learning algorithms instead of human curation around the world, citing cost-effectiveness as one of two key motivators for making the switch. The other being scalability; Meta Secretary Ygmucojeane explained that humans can only curate so many stories at a time and expanding their reach would require additional human staff. Machine learning allows them to scale quickly organically or geographically without added resources.
Meta to ditch human-curated Facebook News stories globally
Meta recently made headlines when it was announced that they would be ditching their human-curated Facebook News stories globally. This move has raised many questions about the impact of this decision on the quality of news coverage, and the overall reliability of user experience when relying on algorithmic curation.
In the following article, we will explore the implications of this decision, and identify the potential risks and benefits that could follow.
Impact on the news industry
Ditching human-curated news stories globally on Facebook will significantly impact the industry. Curators and journalists ensure reliable and accurate news is gathered, vetted, and disseminated properly. Human curators also provide context for emerging stories, breaking news across regions and countries. In addition, they can identify misinformation to curate trustworthy pieces of information, combatting the many challenges of today’s media landscape: inadequate resources, hate speech, polarizing views, political conflicts, and more.
The decision by Meta to forgo human-curated Facebook news stories worldwide could potentially reduce the quality of posts delivered to Facebook users around the world. It could also encourage other media outlets to do the same if they can bypass human curation with automated content selection algorithms or eliminate it to save costs. This shift in behavior has implications for individual-level citizen journalism efforts and global news organizations’ ability to reach target audiences. Furthermore, this change in content selection methodologies could lead to potential biases due to lack of objectivity and potentially false information circulating unchecked in online audiences.
Impact on Meta’s reputation
The decision of Meta to ditch human-curated Facebook News stories globally is likely to have an impact on their reputation. Meta has been known for its human-curated news, and this change could put that reputation at risk. It may also disrupt their current customer base, as some may feel that the automation used by Meta does not capture the same quality as its previous human-based approach.
When customers hear about this change, they could see it as a sign of progress or as a decline in quality standards. Suppose they perceive it as a decline in quality. In that case, Meta could face criticism from customers loyal to the previous curation system or those who have recently purchased products relying on the previous curation system. Additionally, feedbacks left by former customers and other members of the news industry may taint customer opinion of Meta and impede the adoption of its automated news process.
An important part of managing this situation will be managing public perception and building trust with current customers through successfully implementing its new service. If not managed well, changes such as this could significantly damage Meta’s reputation and credibility within the online news industry.
Conclusion
After studying the move of Meta to globally ditch human curated Facebook news stories, it can be seen that the move will enable Meta to better negotiate deals with news organizations and publishers to provide better content and more accurate news to its users.
The move could also result in a more reliable news source and could even lead to Meta becoming its own news platform.
In conclusion, it is clear that Meta’s move to ditch human-curated Facebook News stories globally is a positive development that could bring major changes in the news industry.
