Facebook is going to start showing users more local news in their News Feed, the company announced on Monday. Furthermore, it will also reveal more publications on local arts, sports, and human-interest stories. “Journalists have a role in our society, and I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg has figured out what that is yet”. New stories can still be posted on the site but in won’t appear on the news feed.
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With the change, people who follow local news publications or networks will see more articles from those publications and networks. Media businesses are looking for ways to monetise online audiences, particularly those traditionally from print where revenues are shrinking, largely due to the rise of Facebook and other tech giants. Zuckerberg attempted to address those issues with the latest News Feed update.
Further, the company said that this is just the beginning of our efforts to prioritize high-quality news.
The professor noted that an early sampling of what is being presented as local “news” featured posts from state or city entities in an offering more akin to a bulletin board than the work of journalists.
What does that mean to you?
Why is Facebook doing this? It is also asking users what they deem to be “trustworthy” news sources.
“Social media enables people to spread information faster than ever before, and if we don’t specifically tackle these problems, then we end up amplifying them”, he wrote.
But there are other reasons to be doing this, too.
People who are made aware of what is happening around them are more likely to get involved in their communities and “make a difference”, Zuckerberg wrote in his post.
Not a Facebook reader?
All of those problems – and many more – are probably at play in Facebook’s decision.
The social network’s user base is very extensive.
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In short, you can’t. The update could still come as a boon to local news publishers that have struggled with steep declines in print advertising revenue and the demands of digital transformation in recent years. Facebook learns what you like and what to show you using a variety of different things, but the most important – especially now – is whether something actually drives you to like or comment on it. The company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has expected the time spent on the platform is losing its luster so there is a need to introduce some measures of engagement as company’s core objective is to provide its users a valuable experience.
