Facebook targets ‘low quality’ sites with malicious ads to curb misinformation
advertisementFacebook said that it is addressing spam and misinformation by changing its algorithm using artificial intelligence to stop users from linking to “low-quality” websites.
“With this update, we reviewed hundreds of thousands of web pages linked to/from Facebook to identify those that contain little substantive content and have a large number of disruptive, shocking or malicious ads,” said a Facebook blog post.
“Facebook posts linked to these low-quality sites may not show up as much in users’ newsfeeds.
“We then used artificial intelligence to understand whether new web pages shared on Facebook have similar characteristics. If we determine a post might link to these types of low-quality web pages, it may show up lower in people’s feeds and may not be eligible to be ad,” added the blog post by researchers Shengbo Guo and Jiun-Ren Lin.
They added, “This way people can see fewer misleading posts and more informative posts.”
The same blog post on Facebook also warned publishers about the following issues:
- Number of ads shown relative to content
- Deceptive or malicious ads
- Shocking or sexually suggestive content
- Interstitial ads or pop-up ads
Mashable wrote that many publishers might be affected with the inclusion of pop-up ads or interstitial ads because of their popularity for gaining high visibility to users.
Dating apps are also in danger.
This is just one of the most recent moves from Facebook to fight fake news and stop “click farms” from making money from users who link to low-quality websites.
Facebook was criticized for its role in spreading misinformation during the 2016 US presidential campaign, although it has argued that it did not influence American voters.
Sources: ( gmanetwork.com , mashable.com )
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