Fairer Feeds: Public Interest News, Prominence Rules, and the Future of Discoverability on Platforms

Lyall and Moores's June 2026 policy report addresses a structural feature of the information environment that most counter-disinformation frameworks treat as background: algorithmic curation on major platforms systematically disadvantages public interest journalism while amplifying sensationalist and disinformation-adjacent content. The report proposes a prominence rules framework — requiring platforms to surface verified, high-quality news content above algorithmically preferred alternatives — as a structural intervention that addresses the discoverability problem at its root.

The prominence rules concept connects platform design reform to democratic resilience in a way that content moderation-focused approaches do not: rather than removing harmful content after it has spread, prominence rules shape what content spreads in the first place. This supply-chain-level intervention is more durable than reactive moderation and does not require the difficult judgment calls about whether specific content constitutes disinformation. For policymakers working on Online Safety Act secondary legislation and for practitioners advising on platform accountability frameworks, this report provides the most current evidence base for the prominence rules approach.