While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg seemed cheerful and even jokey when he took the stage today in front of journalists and media executives , he acknowledged that there are reasons for the news industry to be skeptical.
Facebook, after all, has been one of the main forces creating a difficult economic reality for the industry over the past decade.
And there are plenty of people who think it would be foolish for publishers to trust the company again.
For one thing, theres the question of how Facebooks algorithm prioritizes different types of content, and how changes to the algorithm can be enormously damaging to publishers.
So Facebook might be trying something out as an experiment, but if it kind of just causes a spike, it can be hard for your business to plan for that.
Specifically, he noted that many people accuse the company of simply optimizing the feed to keep users on the service for as long as possible.
For many years now, Ive prohibited any of our feed teams from optimizing the systems to encourage the maximum amount of time to be spent.
For example, he said that when Facebook changed the algorithm to prioritize friends and family content over other types of content , it effectively eliminated 50 million hours of viral video viewing each day.
Zuckerberg was onstage in New York with News Corp CEO Robert Thomson to discuss the launch of Facebook News, a new tab within the larger Facebook product thats focused entirely on news.
As for whether Facebook News will include negative stories about Facebook, Zuckerberg seemed delighted to learn that Bloomberg doesnt cover Bloomberg.
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