SAN FRANCISCO • Facebook has long relied on algorithms to select news stories for its users to see. Now the social network wants to rely on something else for the same task too: humans.

Specifically, Facebook plans to hire a team of editors to work on a news initiative, called News Tab, which is its latest venture into the publishing world.

The Silicon Valley company said that journalists would help curate News Tab, a new section inside the company's mobile application that will surface the most recent and relevant stories for readers.

Facebook said it planned to hire seasoned journalists from various outlets for the roles, putting up job postings on its employment board on Tuesday.

News Tab is part of the company's effort to highlight real-time journalism and news. It will exist outside of the News Feed, Facebook's never-ending stream of status updates and friend requests.

"Our goal with the News Tab is to provide a personalised, highly relevant experience for people," said Ms Campbell Brown, Facebook's head of news partnerships. "To start, for the Top News section of the tab, we're pulling together a small team of journalists to ensure we're highlighting the right stories."

Facebook has been under pressure for spreading misinformation and disinformation to millions of its users.

In 2016, Russian operatives manipulated Facebook and disseminated false news stories across its network to influence the outcome of the American presidential election.

On Monday, Facebook also revealed that China was behind Facebook pages and groups that were sowing disinformation about the protests in Hong Kong.

Facebook is now working to restore its reputation as a place where people can find trusted sources of information.

At the same time, its founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has overhauled the News Feed to focus less on news publishers and marketers, and more on personal interactions between users.

Facebook has been pitching News Tab to publishers, hoping to strike content-sharing deals in which the company would license and display articles from partners inside its mobile app.

Facebook may pay large sums to some - though not all - publishing partners for access to their content.

Most of the stories appearing in the News Tab will be algorithmically sorted and ranked, Ms Brown said. But she said training those algorithms to personalise content takes an enormous amount of data and time, which is why Facebook is hiring journalists to curate the day's most important news stories.

NYTIMES