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Facebook announced changes to the news feed in a blog post today. The aim is to further focus on original reporting.
Social media giant Facebook has announced changes to its news feed that primarily affect news sites. Posts from transparent authors will be given priority over others. The blog post states:
Today we're updating the way news is ranked in News Feed to prioritize original reporting and stories with transparent authorship. These signals are based on user research and were created with input from news publishers and academic experts, and will apply only to news content.
According to Facebook, news is important to inform people around the world and will ensure that original content is prioritized. It continues:
We will now prioritize articles in News Feed that we identify as original reporting on a developing story or topic. We do this by looking at groups of articles on a particular story topic and identifying those that are most often cited as an original source.
Transparent authors are rewarded
The changes will first be made to news in English before the whole thing is expanded. However, this optimization will not affect the posts of friends but will only target news sites. But there is another change. In the future, news sites that do not disclose transparent information about the authors will be demoted by Facebook. It says:
We will review news articles for bylines or a staff page on the publisher's website that lists the first and last names of reporters or other editors. We've found that publishers that don't include this information often lack credibility with readers and produce content that contains clickbait or ad farms, all content that people tell us they don't want to see on Facebook.
These changes should therefore be taken seriously and will ensure more order in the news feed – if you want to read the entire announcement, you can find the blog post here. (Image: Facebook)
