Facebook News Feed ranking model

entry · p2026-09-07-030 · unverified

231 million users accessed Facebook every month in the USA

tech: facebook-feed-ranking
passes the definition as: a ranking model fit to each user's engagement history that selects and orders what appears in the feed
from: 2020-09
region: US
domain: agency
side: loss
people: 231,000,000 users (proxy for people) (2020)
effect: 53.7 percent (2020) — share of content views coming from like-minded sources under the default ranking model; a three-month experiment cut it to 36.2% and changed none of eight preregistered attitudes
reversible: yes
who holds the switch: owner:Meta
attribution: named
source kind: primary
the statistic: Nyhan et al. (Nature 2023): 231 million users accessed Facebook monthly in the USA in Q3–Q4 2020. Among 23,377 experimental users, the default feed delivered 53.7% of content views from like-minded sources; reducing it to 36.2% (0.77 s.d.) increased cross-cutting exposure and cut uncivil language, but moved none of eight preregistered attitudinal measures including affective polarisation.
source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC10396953
proposed by: researcher (opus), brief 2026-09-06 second harvest, feeds-ads-moderation
received: 2026-09-06T13:34:02-04:00
harvest report: impacts/harvest/2026-09-07-feeds-ads-moderation.md

Rulings, in order

2026-09-06T13:34:54-04:00 · validatorunverified — fetch failed: HTTP 000
2026-09-06T13:38:18-04:00 · sessionnote — Unverified (HTTP 000); no severity ruling until the quote is found.

The proposal as it arrived (JSON)

{
 "id": "p2026-09-07-030",
 "received": "2026-09-06T13:34:02-04:00",
 "proposer": "researcher (opus), brief 2026-09-06 second harvest, feeds-ads-moderation",
 "kind": "entry",
 "sha": "dcc32295564205e3",
 "data": {
  "kind": "entry",
  "tech": "facebook-feed-ranking",
  "tech_name": "Facebook News Feed ranking model",
  "definition": "a ranking model fit to each user's engagement history that selects and orders what appears in the feed",
  "from": "2020-09",
  "region": "US",
  "domain": "agency",
  "side": "loss",
  "people": {
   "n": 231000000,
   "unit": "users (proxy for people)",
   "date": "2020"
  },
  "effect": {
   "n": 53.7,
   "unit": "percent",
   "date": "2020",
   "what": "share of content views coming from like-minded sources under the default ranking model; a three-month experiment cut it to 36.2% and changed none of eight preregistered attitudes"
  },
  "reversible": true,
  "switch": "owner:Meta",
  "statistic": "Nyhan et al. (Nature 2023): 231 million users accessed Facebook monthly in the USA in Q3–Q4 2020. Among 23,377 experimental users, the default feed delivered 53.7% of content views from like-minded sources; reducing it to 36.2% (0.77 s.d.) increased cross-cutting exposure and cut uncivil language, but moved none of eight preregistered attitudinal measures including affective polarisation.",
  "source": "https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC10396953",
  "quote": "231 million users accessed Facebook every month in the USA",
  "attribution": "named",
  "source_kind": "primary"
 },
 "from_file": "impacts/harvest/2026-09-07-feeds-ads-moderation.md"
}