Image source: medium.com
According to Reuters, Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that Facebook will be permanently suspending civic and political group recommendations on Wednesday.
Facebook groups are essentially communities that are public, which every user is free to join.
Many activist groups have been requesting social media platforms like Facebook to change their algorithmic group recommendations.
Originally, Facebook has said it was temporarily halting such recommendations in October 2020. This decision came during the weeks leading up to the US Presidential elections. On Wednesday Facebook said it would be making this permanent and would expand the policy globally.
However, on Tuesday, Senator Ed Markey asked for reports from Facebook, stating that Facebook had failed to stop recommending political groups on its platform after this move. He called Facebook’s groups “breeding groups for hate” and noted they had been venues of planning for the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Speaking on a conference call with analysts about Facebook’s earnings, Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that the company was “continuing to fine-tune how this works.” Zuckerberg also said that Facebook was considering steps to reduce the amount of political content in users’ news feeds.
