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Facebook is hiring journalists to monitor its news tab because its algorithms suck at it

Facebook says it’s putting together a small team of journalists to ensure it is highlighting the right stories. Let’s see how long this lasts.

facebook on computer with binoculars
Image: Unsplash

Facebook is going to start hiring journalists to monitor its new news initiative called News Tab. Why? Well, apparently the company’s algorithm isn’t doing a great job of selecting news stories for its users to see. And in most cases, they’re promoting a whole lot of fake news that assists in spreading misinformation and disinformation to millions of its users.

Here’s what the company told The New York Times in a statement:

“Our goal with the News Tab is to provide a personalized, highly relevant experience for people,” said Campbell Brown, Facebook’s head of news partnerships. “To start, for the Top News section of the tab we’re pulling together a small team of journalists to ensure we’re highlighting the right stories.”

Facebook says they plan on poaching seasoned journalists from various news outlets and posting job opportunities on its employment board as early as Tuesday

Back in April, Mark Zuckerberg hinted that a new News Tab was coming to the Facebook mobile app, and as it turns out, he was right on the money.

Zuckerberg stated that “We talked about the role quality journalism plays in building informed communities and the principles Facebook should use for building a news tab to surface more high-quality news, including the business model and ecosystem to support it.”

Ok Zuck, we see you. Hopefully, this new news initiate doesn’t come back to bite the company back in the ass. Now that there’s actually human oversight, who gets the blame when something royally gets fucked up? This should be interesting.

Have any thoughts on this? Do you think Facebook will fail with this like they do with any new news initiative?  Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Kevin is the founder and executive editor at KnowTechie. With over 15 years of blogging experience, Kevin has transformed what was once a passion project into a full-blown tech news publication. Shoot him an email at kevin@knowtechie.com

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