Facebook to Reduce the Amount of News in Your News Feed
posted Sunday Jul 3, 2016 by Scott Ertz
Over the past few years, Facebook has courted publishers to their platform with tools to make publishing news, reviews and opinions easy. For many publications, Facebook is the first or second most popular source of traffic on news stories, with people liking, commenting and sharing on the network. The newsfeed takes all of that into account for what to show on your News Feed, meaning that your friends topics are more likely to show in your feed.
All of that is about to change, though, with Facebook announcing a new algorithm that places content from friends and family above that of brands and publishers. This is not the first time they have made a change in this direction, but it is the first time they have advertised it as such. Because of that, it is definitely a concern to both publishers and readers that they might see less of the news and articles they like.
Facebook will remind you that the important, trending topics are available in the Trending section of the site, though we have recently learned that Facebook curates that content, promoting news stories that they want you to see and culling topics they do not. That means that the Trending section represents the interests of Facebook, not necessarily your own. For example, you will not likely see a story promoted by Facebook that paints a conservative politician in a positive light.
The actual implementation of the algorithm is yet to be realized. It could have a large impact, or you might not notice at all. If you do see a change in behavior, there is good news for those who want to continue to see all of the stories from a particular publisher or brand. The New York Times has the steps to guarantee you see future stories from us or other brands.
In the meantime, the best way to ensure you and your friends continue to see content from your favorite publishers is to interact with their posts: like, comment and share.
