Why do you see what you see on the Facebook News Feed? Details of social media algorithms are often elusive, but Facebook this week published its Content Distribution Guidelines to offer more information about how it decides which posts have limited visibility in the News Feed.
“While the Community Standards make it clear what content is removed from Facebook because we don’t allow it on the platform, the Content Distribution Guidelines make it clear what content receives reduced distribution on News Feed because it’s problematic or low quality,” it says.
Facebook notes that several of these guidelines have been publicly revealed in the past; they simply haven’t been collected into a single resource. Now there’s a central directory. These guidelines are divided into three categories defined by Facebook’s stated reasons for demoting content: “Responding to People’s Direct Feedback,” “Incentivizing Creators to Invest in High-Quality and Accurate Content,” and “Fostering a Safer Community.”
Facebook doesn’t offer specific details about how the News Feed is moderated. It’s not clear how much an offending piece of content’s visibility is restricted, for example, and the assessment of that content is often waved away as “predictions.” But in general, these are News Feed no-gos:
Each guideline has a dedicated page explaining the “What” and the “Why” behind it. Some also include animated GIFs that are supposed to visually represent the concept. Each page has a dedicated “Change Log” section, too, but so far there’s only one version of each guideline listed.
“We’ll continue to update the Content Distribution Guidelines,” Facebook said in its announcement, “to provide people with information about how we define and treat problematic or low-quality content that doesn’t otherwise violate our Community Standards.”
This additional transparency into how News Feed content is moderated follows increasing criticism regarding Facebook’s apparent inability (or unwillingness) to offer more clarity about how its platform is used to spread misinformation related to matters of public concern.
Facebook says there’s more information available to Page operators in the Publisher Guidelines and the Page Quality tab, which the company says it will continue to expand so it can “help provide more transparency into policies that may be affecting a Page.”
