Facebook on Friday released guidelines for publishers that will sound familiar to close observers of the social giant’s often-fraught relationship with news organizations.
In a post titled “Principles for Publishers” released Friday, Facebook News Feed Vice President Adam Mosseri advised publishers that the social network’s users value meaningful stories, respectful behavior and authentic content.
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This is a familiar refrain for any journalist who’s attended any future-of-news conference in the last few years. They resemble “News Feed Values,” a list of principles including authenticity, diversity of opinion and newness, that the company articulated last year.
Here are the three principles:
- “People on Facebook value meaningful, informative stories”:
People expect the stories in their feed to be meaningful to them — and we have learned over time that people value stories that they consider informative. We are not in the business of picking which issues the world should read about, but we are in the business of connecting people with the stories they find most meaningful.
- “People on Facebook value accurate, authentic content”
As we’ve said previously, people want to see accurate information on Facebook, and so do we. People tell us that authentic stories are the ones that resonate most. So we work hard to understand what type of posts people consider genuine, so we can rank them higher in News Feed. And we work to understand what kinds of stories people find misleading, sensational and spammy, to make sure people see those less. Publishers should focus on posting accurate, authentic content.
- “People on Facebook value standards for safe, respectful behavior”
We believe strongly that people should feel – and be – safe and respectful when they use Facebook. To help balance these needs and interests of a diverse community, we may remove certain kinds of sensitive content or limit the audience that sees it. Learn more about how we do that here.
Facebook’s full post is here.
