Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly approved a new internal effort to defend the social network's News Feeds reputation last month, a huge policy change amid criticism of the spread of misinformation by social media. .
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Zuckerberg signed Project Amplify in August. The new project includes suggestions for highlighting positive stories from Facebook to users' News Feeds, the most popular section of the site, including posts written by Facebook itself. The idea of Project Amplify is said to have shocked some senior executives of the company.
Project Amplify has since been tested in three US cities, the Times reports. Company spokesman Joe Osborne told the paper that with the positive posts there were no dramatic changes to how posts were ranked on News Feed of Facebook.
But this particular project is a departure from Facebook's previous efforts with a simple apology for issues related to misinformation and hate speech. Zuckerberg himself was forced to apologize several times for the Russian influence campaigns that proliferated on the site during the elections of 2016 and pledged to increase transparency.
The company has faced a lot of criticism, especially during duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have prompted some of its executives to launch Project Amplify.
The Times report cites a series of The Wall Street Journal reports released last week based on internal documents that claim Facebook downplayed the negative effects of Instagram to young girls and did not take harsh action even when he saw misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine spreading on his platform.
