Social media giant Facebook is planning to roll out a feature that would prioritize local news. The effort was viewed as one way to improve its services. The company has announced this development in a blog as it aims to promote contents coming from families and friends. With this, Facebook users will now see more local news on their feeds.
Facebook to start prioritizing local news?
Facebook said this feature would prioritize local news outlets since the demographics involved are smaller. This means that local news would be elevated after a Facebook user would click the news in a tight geographic locale. It added that news content would also be prioritized when users share contents from a certain publication.
“Many people told me they thought that if we could turn down the temperature on the more divisive issues and instead focus on concrete local issues, then we’d all make more progress together,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote.
“Local news helps build community – both on and offline. It’s an important part of making sure the time we all spend on Facebook is valuable,” he added.
The Facebook founder further revealed that the new feature was a product of his fact-finding trip in the U.S. He said that this new feature would roll out first in the United States. He, however, stressed that this feature is still work-in-progress.
“This update may not capture all small or niche-interest publishers at first, but we are working to improve precision and coverage over time,” the Facebook said in a blog post.
“All of our work to reduce false news, misinformation, clickbait, sensationalism and inauthentic accounts still applies.”
Meanwhile, search giant Google has been testing its Bulletin app to crowdsource local news reporting.
