Facebook will stop recommending militant or political groups to its users, a measure already taken a few months ago in the United States to reduce electoral tensions.
The social network, which played an important role in the Arab Spring ten years ago, now wants to reinvent its image by moving away from the controversies and political scandals that have marked its daily life since the election of Donald Trump and Brexit in 2016.
We have stopped recommending militant or political groups in the United States as the elections approached, and now we intend to extend this rule to everyone, said Mark Zuckerberg during the presentation of the quarterly results of the social media giant. His goal is to calm things down and discourage divisive conversations.
In a previously issued statement, he said he was excited to design in 2021 ways to create economic opportunity, build communities and help people have fun.
The Californian group achieved almost 86,000 million dollars in sales during the year and generated more than 29,000 million in profits, 58% more despite the pandemic, a boycott of brands last summer, and significant tensions with civil society, officials elected, and authorities.
Facebook has dealt with all this by multiplying measures to better moderate content and curb misinformation, without succeeding in satisfying many anti-racist organizations or those dedicated to the defense of rights and freedoms in general.
In September, we announced that we had withdrawn more than a million groups in one year Zuckerberg recalled. But there are also a lot of groups that we don’t want to encourage people to join even if they don’t break our rules.
The founder of the social network added that his teams are also looking for ways to reduce the visibility of political content on the user’s wall. Of course, it will always be possible to participate in discussions and political groups for whoever wants it said the billionaire.
One of the main comments from our community right now is that people don’t want politics and discussions to take precedence over the rest when they use our services, he concluded.
