Facebook muted political content despite 'high and inefficient' costs: Report

Facebook attempted to mute the majority of political posts in its efforts to avoid controversy, according to internal documents.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his team had Facebook demote "sensitive" posts on the newsfeed in the months after the Jan. 6 riots, according to internal documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. The demotion was encouraged to counter critics' claims that the Big Tech giant profited from promoting political and controversial content on its platform. While the effort helped make Facebook appear less political, it hurt traditional publishers and user satisfaction.

The social platform could have achieved its goal of appearing less political by demoting political and community content, an internal analysis concluded, but doing so would come at a "high and inefficient cost."