Whether any political group recognizes an informed ranking of trustworthy media as legitimate is not my concern. If anything, I’m arguing the opposite.

Every individual’s assessment of which news sources are trustworthy does not have equal value. For example, the Facebook users who shared the inaccurate left-wing or right-wing pages I referenced in the article demonstrated that they either lack the media literacy to filter out false information, or don’t care that some of what they’re sharing isn’t true as long as it supports their political positions.

The NewsFeed algorithm already cultivates what information Facebook users see, putting some posts higher in your feed than others. Currently, NewsFeed helps disseminate fake and sensationalist information — sometimes because people deliberately game it, but mostly because individuals like sharing those inaccurate news items.

I think that’s bad for politics, and society more broadly. And based on recent statements from Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and others, Facebook thinks it’s bad too.

Addressing the problem requires changing NewsFeed. No matter how they do it, some users won’t like it. However, if they want to address the problem of fake and sensationalist news bouncing around information bubbles by treating some sources as more trustworthy than others — if we’re going to value objective truth — then the question becomes how.

It’s important to allow individuals to express their opinions, whether those are supported by facts or not. That’s a core tenet of free speech. However, when it comes to deciding which third-party sources will receive higher placement within users’ feeds, it’s better to ask a diverse group of people who have spent years developing critical reading and media literacy skills, rather than people who share false and sensationalist information, even if some of the latter don’t like it.