Facebook redesigns app with special ‘News’ feed that shows zero posts from pals or family
FACEBOOK is now pushing ahead with a dedicated feed for news – entirely separate from your normal News Feed.
It’s free from photos of your friend’s new baby and your cousin’s questionable memes – and focuses entirely on journalism.
The section is called Facebook News, and is supposed to make it easier to track down actual news.
It entered testing in October last year, but is now rolling out to all users across the US – with a global launch likely to follow.
“News gives people more control over the stories they see, and the ability to explore a wider range of their news interests, directly within the Facebook app,” said Facebook’s Campbell Brown.
“It also highlights the most relevant national stories of the day.
“News articles will continue to appear in News Feed as they do today.”
You’ll still find regular news in your normal News Feed.
But the Facebook News section will be a dedicated and curated area for news that Facebook hopes you’ll find interesting.
Facebook will be using a team of journalists to identify important news for the Today’s Stories feature with Facebook News.
There’ll also be automated personalisation that selects stories based on the news you read, share and follow.
Facebook has added Topic Sections that let you “dive deeper” into areas like business, entertainment, health, science & tech, and sports.
The Your Subscriptions area will be for people who have linked their paid news subscriptions to their Facebook account.
And controls are also available to let you hide articles, topics and publishers that you don’t want to see.
There’s also a local news section, to help people find stories about their area from smaller publications.
Facebook 'inauthentic behaviour' report – May 2020
Here's what happened...
- In May 2020, Facebook says it removed two networks of accounts, Pages and Groups
- One was from Tunisia and the other one targeted audiences in the Kurdistan region of Iraq
- During the month, Facebook removed 253 accounts – as well as 240 Instagram accounts
- There were 770 Pages removed in total, along with 101 Groups
Facebook has previously been criticised for not giving users news from a broad-enough spectrum of viewpoints.
Now Facebook says that its curators will have “editorial independence”, choosing stories based on publicly available guidelines.
Content from local and independent publishers and journalists will be included, as well as major news organisations.
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