And Facebook doesn't need to do the choosing; they could use a mix of independent, non-partisan rankings of news sources (example: http://www.allgeneralizationsarefalse.com/the-chart-version-...).
To be clear, I don't think they'll do that, but they could.
Naturally, this will lead to rating user trustworthiness, and filtering untrustworthy people and their untrustworthy views out of your newsfeed.
The problem was created in the first place by Facebook deciding which stories to rank higher, instead of giving people the stories and posts in chronological order. But it did that very poorly and in a way that could be easily manipulated.
Now they're trying to "fix" that by exerting even more control over the stories - in other words, doubling down on the thing that hasn't worked.
The article already makes me worried about their plans. I've seen some stories recently say that many Trump supporters, for instance, have a tendency to "trust" fake news sources. So according to Facebook's plans, those fake news sources may actually become "trusted" on the platform now, because many people trust them.
Alternatively, just like YouTube, Facebook may "curate" the landscape so much, that only "non-offensive" stories will ever be shown on the platform.
The algorithm will probably "nerf" small papers with insufficient data and boost big ones. Papers that are controversial in some political camp will get flags and instead people will get food articles and CNN/ABC/Fox etc.
I liked Facebook's old "show stuff in order" (pre 2011?) way more.
That would likely include all news.
And plenty of us thought it was stupid back then, too.
I'm sure we will now hear complaints that Facebook shouldn't be choosing which sources are trustworthy.