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Facebook Plans Major News Feed Changes

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12 January 2018

By Alex Khalil

Facebook has unveiled planned changes to how its news feed works, making posts from businesses, brands and media less prominent.

Instead, content that promotes conversations among family and friends who use the site will be emphasized, explained by Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive. The firm acknowledged organizations on Facebook may see the popularity of their posts drop as a result. The changes are set to come in the next few weeks.

Mr Zuckerberg wrote:

‘We’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content – posts from businesses, brands and media – is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.’

Hopefully this will mean less ads on the site too. I can hardly go three posts without seeing an ad for a terrible mobile game.

He said that he and his team felt responsible to make sure Facebook was good for people’s well-being. If content wants to be promoted, it will now be seen to encourage group discussion and community interaction. Another example the social media giant rose was live video feeds, which tend to generate quick a bit of traction. The focus of this was to make you spend less time on Facebook, but that the time you do spend will be ‘more valuable’.

Zuckerberg vowed that he would ‘fix’ Facebook by 2018, saying he wanted to ensure users were protected from abuse on the site and that time spent on the site would be time spent well. He also pledged to defend Facebook from nation states. Recent analysis into countries like Russia, show that they have tried to manipulate the site to show certain content. Many put Trump’s win of the 2016 election down to this.

Given the recent public scrutiny over the site, it’s important that they maintain a consumer-friendly approach to their site. It has had problems with censoring hate speech and xenophobia on the site, but hopefully these changes should make things a bit more positive.

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