Facebook said Tuesday it is expanding an ongoing test that limits the number of political posts appearing in News Feed, broadening the trial to Costa Rica, Sweden, Spain and Ireland. It is also tweaking its News Feed algorithm to "put less emphasis on" comments and shares as it determines what posts to amplify.
In a company blog post, Facebook product management director Aastha Gupta described the changes to News Feed, writing, "We're putting more emphasis on new signals such as how likely people are to provide us with negative feedback on posts about political topics and current events when we rank those types of posts in their News Feed." The news was first reported by Axios.
In February, Facebook announced it would begin testing limitations on political posts for a select number of users in Canada, Brazil, Indonesia and the U.S. "We've seen positive results from our tests to address the feedback we've received from people about wanting to see less political content in their News Feed," the company post said.