Facebook took out the trash

Last year, Facebook began publishing a quarterly transparency report to fight criticism that the platform amplifies divisive content.

While the reports helped mitigate those fears, they introduced a new concern — that Facebook’s most popular posts were “trash,” per The Wall Street Journal.

To fix the problem…

… Meta had to define what makes content trashy.

• The company pulled members from its product, user-experience, and integrity teams to identify what users consider “trashy” content, and how to avoid promoting those posts.
• With plans to incorporate more short-form videos into the feed, Meta also built a separate system to define low-quality posts in Reels.

The results have been immediate, but Facebook has work to do. Though the top 100 posts are cleaner than before, the top 500 are still littered with “trash.”

Plus, the content now dominating the feed — celebrity news, memes, and Reels videos — isn’t exactly the most stimulating brain food.