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A24 TECHNOLOGY
Saturday 20 January 2018

Facebook to emphasize ‘trustworthy’ news via user surveys

By TALI ARBEL have users see fewer posts
AP Technology Writer from publishers, businesses
Facebook is taking another and celebrities, and more
step to try to make itself from friends and family.
more socially beneficial, Zuckerberg said Friday be-
saying it will boost news cause of that, news posts
sources that its users rate as will make up 4 percent of
trustworthy in surveys. the news feed , down from
In a blog post and a Face- 5 percent today.
book post from CEO Mark Facebook says it will start
Zuckerberg Friday, the prioritizing news sources
company said it is survey- deemed trustworthy in the
ing users about their famil- U.S. and then internation-
iarity with and trust in news ally.
sources. That data will in- It says it has surveyed a
fluence what others see in “diverse and representa-
their news feeds. tive sample” of U.S. users
It’s the second major tweak and next week it will begin
to Facebook’s algorithm testing prioritizing the news
announced this month. The sources deemed trustwor-
social-media giant, a ma- thy. Publishers with lower
jor source of news for us- scores may see a drop
ers, has struggled to deal in their distribution across
with an uproar over fake Facebook.
news and Russian-linked “There’s too much sensa- This Nov. 9, 2017, file photo shows Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg meeting with a group of
posts, meant to influence tionalism, misinformation entrepreneurs and innovators during a round-table discussion at Cortex Innovation Community
the 2016 U.S. elections, on and polarization in the technology hub in St. Louis.
its platform. The company world today. Social media Associated Press
has slowly acknowledged enables people to spread ries that survey-takers will and others are broadly publicans did, according
its role in that foreign inter- information faster than ever try to game the system, or trusted across society even to Pew Research Center;
ference. before, and if we don’t that they just won’t be able by those who don’t follow that gap had grown from
Zuckerberg has said his specifically tackle these to differentiate between them directly.” But this is early 2016.
goal for this year is to fix problems, then we end up high-quality and low-qual- complicated. Facebook’s move is a posi-
Facebook , whether by amplifying them. ity news sources — an is- In the U.S., there has been tive one, but that it’s not
protecting against foreign That’s why it’s important sue made evident by the a growing partisan split in clear how effective this
interference and abuse or that News Feed promotes spread of many fake-news perceptions of the media system will be in identifying
by making users feel better high quality news that items in the past few years. . Roughly a third of Demo- trustworthy news sources,
about how they spend time helps build a sense of com- Zuckerberg says that some crats in early 2017 said they David Chavern, CEO of the
on Facebook. mon ground,” Zuckerberg news organizations “are trusted information from na- news media trade group
Facebook announced last wrote. only broadly trusted by tional news organizations a News Media Alliance, said
week that it would try to Of course, there are wor- their readers or watchers, lot; only 11 percent of Re- in a statement Friday.q

Uber nearing autonomous cars without human backup driver

By TOM KRISHER are proved safe. “Once we time next year in an un- the driver’s side would in- come more capable. Cur-
AP Auto Writer can check that box, which specified location. tervene if the car needed rently the cars are limited to
DETROIT (AP) — Uber plans we call passing the robot Meyhofer said Volvo XC-90 help. The vehicles have im- 40 miles per hour, Meyhofer
to carry passengers in au- driver’s license test, that’s SUVs are being prepared proved to the point where said.
tonomous vehicles without when we can remove the for the work. Uber Tech- Uber has removed one of Such testing likely will be
human backup drivers in vehicle operator,” Mey- nologies Inc. has 215 test the humans and now the done in warm-weather ar-
about the same time frame hofer said in an interview at vehicles carrying passen- backup driver enters data eas that don’t get snow.
as competitors, which ex- an auto industry investors gers with human backups on a screen in rare cases, Meyhofer said Uber is still
pect to be on the road at conference Detroit. “We’re in Phoenix and Pittsburgh. Meyhofer said. working on use of the cars
the latest sometime next going aggressively too.” They travel 80,000 miles per The ride service now has when snow covers the lane
year, the service’s autono- Waymo, the name of the week gathering data and 1,600 people working on lines and can’t be seen by
mous vehicle chief said autonomous car unit of Al- have given 50,000 paid autonomous vehicles in the cameras. “That’s all well
Wednesday. phabet Inc.’s Google, cur- rides, he said. four test locations. within our scope. It’s just
Advanced Technology rently is testing on public Uber also is testing autono- Waymo said in November not in our scope today,” he
Group leader Eric Mey- roads in the Phoenix area mous vehicles in Toronto that it plans to carry pas- said.
hofer wouldn’t give a spe- without human backups and San Francisco but says sengers without human The developments on the
cific start date but he said and plans to carry passen- it is not carrying passengers backups in a few months road come as self-driving
Uber won’t deploy the gers soon. General Motors in them. but gave no definite date. car technologies are be-
driverless cars without hu- Co.’s Cruise Automation San Francisco-based Uber The testing would be done ing battled over in court.
man backups unless they has promised to start some- started carrying passen- in a relatively small area Waymo has alleged that
gers with autonomous ve- that is covered by detailed one of its top self-driving
hicles in 2016, first with two three-dimensional maps. car engineers, Anthony
Uber employees on board, Meyhofer said Uber would Levandowski, stole its trade
Meyhofer said. The per- start in the same way, secrets before founding a
son in the passenger seat gradually expanding the startup that he sold to Uber
documented the vehicle’s size of the area as mapping for $680 million. Uber has
behavior while the one on is done and vehicles be- denied the allegations.q