Facebook’s News Feed has certainly grown up from the days of showing you all the stuff that your friends shared to a much more meaningful section that helps you stay updated with what’s going on around the world.
There is a big part of our News Feed that is usually occupied by sponsored news sections which may not even lie in our area of interest and this is about to change soon.
Facebook has announced that it will prioritize news from local outlets over those from the other sources which, despite being ‘trustworthy’, can hinder your search for what’s more important to you. The social media giant introduced this new update:
So that you can see topics that have a direct impact on you and your community and discover what’s happening in your local area.
Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has initiated a self-improvement project by the name of “Fixing Facebook” and this upgrade is a part of this campaign. Here’s what Zuckerberg wrote about the update:
Local news helps us understand the issues that matter in our communities and affect our lives. Research suggests that reading local news is directly correlated with civic engagement.
Local Stories to Dominate
This update will be following a simple rule and that is to place the local stories in your news feed above the others. USA has been chosen as the region to start with this upgrade and gradually it will head to other countries.
One thing is obvious that the local publishers will benefit more with this upgrade which is equally good for the publishers and the readers.
What remains to be seen here is that how Facebook will be ranking the “trusted” news sources over the non-trusted ones. This is definitely, a start to the Fixing Facebook campaign as Facebook’s head of news product, Alex Hardiman and head of news partnerships, Campbell Brown have hinted it in a talk about their future ventures:
This is just the beginning of our efforts to prioritize high-quality news. All of our work to reduce false news, misinformation, clickbait, sensationalism and inauthentic accounts still applies.
Via Quartz
