It Is Happening: Facebook To Start Ranking News Sites By Users' Votes (A Very Steemit-esque Approach, If You Ask Me)

in #steemit7 years ago

I already wrote a few days ago, about the connection between Facebook's announcement to focus more on user interaction (and less on news) and Mark Zuckerberg's new year resolution to learn more about "the cryptocurrency phenomenon". In that post I was suggesting that Facebook is switching their business model: from a corporate-centric approach, to a user-centric approach.

Now, Facebook moves even further and announces a new change: news sites will be ranked based on user's votes. In other words, people will decide what news site is more respectable than others, not Facebook's algorithms.

This is going straight in the direction of Steemit, if you really look at it, and I'm almost sure there will be also some sort of an incentive for users to "upvote" a new site. If not from Facebook directly, then from the sites themselves, which may want to "buy" Facebook votes, in order to increase their reach.

It's another step in the direction of the "decentralization of Facebook", as much as difficult - and unlikely - this decentralization may seem now. And although I'm sure the user's vote will be weighed in by other algorithms too (it won't be 1:1) the shift Facebook is cracking in its business model becomes more and more visible.

On one side, I'm sure Mark and his team have had enough heat from the "fake news" clusterfuck last year and they are looking to distance themselves from news, as fast as they can. But on the other side, they're still a publicly traded company and the investors are pressing for returns.

So, they still have to make some money.

Only with this shift they're putting their users at least on the same level with companies, if not higher.

Because, if users will decide what news site is "more reliable", that will weaken their "we are the product being sold" status, and enforce the "we are the ones who decide what's valuable" status.

From here to finding a way to measure how much their vote is worth is only a very small step: they just need to launch their own token.


I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.


Dragos Roua


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Soon nobody knows who facebook is ( 5 years)

I'm sure FaceBook will be perfectly honest in their tabulation and evaluation of the votes..

lmao ya sure they will ....

I think they're beginning to see vulnerability in Google and Youtube with Adpocalypse and are setting up to pounce and go for the throat to start taking money from Google and it's advertising.

I love your steem.supply @dragosroua

I may not make much right now but it helps a lot with what i do get 😀

Thanks for the nice words, appreciated :)

">In other words, people will decide what news site is more respectable than others, not Facebook's algorithms.<"

Well, we will see about that. I call this PR stun. How long will it take, before their algorithms start clicking on likes like they would be coming from users? They are already censuring. fb is, just like google, very politically biased.
What are the chances, that some news will rank high, if news is opposite what fb's political stance is? Not a chance, media is there to mold users opinion as media wish, not to report the facts.

likes on facebook can be manipukated too. because there are some websites offering a thousand like for a post in exchange of cash or tasks. I think they will make a new site connected to facebook like what you said.

I saw the news too. I have not been on facistbbook in quite a while. I like steemit, and I have been more active on twitter. Why buy Zuck a Lambo, if I can get myself a '92 Buick for the same content?

mark Zuckerberg following steemits little steps ;)

I'm not too surprised to see Facebook move in this direction. Mark Zuckerberg is certainly no dummy, and I'm certain FB has been monitoring the growth of Steemit AND putting significant resources into determining how to combat the competition it presents. This will likely be just the first change of 2018 from Facebook (and other apps/sites).

Well that confirms that you are in the play, very good perception and reading of this type of situations. I think you helped Mark make his decision... Excellent your information. I wil be attentive to see what other news you bring from Facebook. Greetings.

"steem.supply" is very good tool, and I used it. I already voted for you like witness. Greetings.