NYT: Facebook promotes positive stories about itself in the news feed
Facebook is said to have set up a new project that pushes positive stories about Facebook to users on their news feed. That’s what The New York Times claims. Facebook contradicts the newspaper’s claims.
The project, codenamed Project Amplify, was thought to have been conceived during an internal meeting in January, as part of a strategy shift to drastically change Facebook’s image. The New York Times reported that based on conversations with anonymous Facebook employees, both former and current.
In August, Mark Zuckerberg is said to have personally approved the project. Since then, testing would be conducted in three American cities. The pro-Facebook posts would include Facebook’s goal to use 100 percent renewable energy and the company’s innovations. The NYT article does not mention whether there are already test results or whether testing has already been carried out in more cities with such messages.
According to the NYT employees, the strategy helps to be transparent to users and to apologize publicly for scandals, not to positively change public opinion. That is why it would have been decided to deal with criticism ‘defensively’ from now on.
Project Amplify should ensure that positive news stories about Facebook are recommended in users’ news feeds. Some of those messages come from Facebook employees themselves, NYT writes. In addition, according to the newspaper, it was decided that as part of the “defensive” strategy, Facebook will no longer apologize publicly as often, but will instead challenge allegations of guilt more often.
A spokesperson for Facebook debunks the claims from The New York Times. For example, the January meeting in which the new strategy was discussed would never have taken place. Also, the company would not have changed the ranking of the news feed. According to the spokesperson, while Facebook has held a test in three cities with Facebook news, they would be separated from the rest of the feed and it would also be clearly indicated that the messages came from Facebook itself.
Facebook has often come under fire lately, including through internal documents that The Wall Street Journal is said to have seen. On that basis, WSJ wrote, among other things, that Facebook is conducting an internal investigation into the harmfulness of Instagram and the newspaper concluded that the company does little about illegal content on the site. Facebook has responded defensively to WSJ’s allegations, writing that the articles “deliberately misrepresent” the company’s plans. The newspaper also allegedly attributed “blatantly false motives” to Facebook’s leadership and employees.