Facebook permanently stops recommending political groups worldwide

Worldwide, Facebook permanently stops algorithmically recommending Groups that deal with politics. The move is intended to make the debate on the social network less heated and reduce the number of conversations about divisive topics.

Facebook already issued recommendations for political groups in the US in the months before the presidential elections in that country, but now the algorithm will no longer recommend political groups worldwide and permanently, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in the discussion of the quarterly figures. Zuckerberg calls the move a logical follow-up to what Facebook was already doing to reduce division.

The social medium received a lot of criticism, partly because the algorithm started recommending political Groups that had to match the interests, with the unintended consequence that users ended up with Groups that presented them with increasingly extreme political views.

Facebook also says it will encounter problems with the obligation for apps to request permission for tracking. This will have an impact on turnover from this spring, the company believes. That’s because many users are expected to refuse tracking. That impact increases over the year as more people install the new required version of iOS 14. A factor that reduces the impact is that other companies will probably also be able to track less. Facebook’s PR strategy is that refusing tracking makes it less easy for SMEs to reach a targeted audience with their ads.