Facebook News Feed Will Show You More Local Stories, Says Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook announces one more tweak in its campaign to redesign the user’s news feed for making it more connective. Now, the social giant promises the users to push more ‘local news’ content on their news feed. The users following the local publishers on Facebook will receive the promoted content from those publishers. On the other hand, the users who don't have any publisher in their following list will see the local stories shared by someone in their friend circle. So, either you want or not you will be getting news about what's happening in your town.

Over the years the communication mode for news and almost every public content has gone online. This finally emerged as the suppression of the local news by the social media platforms like Facebook and the digital media. The viral content and the videos showing certain entertaining or gossiping material have totally taken over the local stories. Now, the Facebook wants to give equal importance to the local news. The idea emerges after Mark Zuckerberg, visits many towns and cities of the US, last year. After meeting with the people he gets to know that the Facebook users want to discuss more local issues instead of becoming a part of a national hot topic. “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 wrote.

However, the real reason behind the ‘local news’ addition to the news feed is the long-time criticism that Facebook has been facing for its content. The entire change in algorithm is a fight against the people that are using the medium to the target audience with the hoax and framed news. With the new algorithm, Facebook is shifting the priority to the more ‘trustworthy’ sources for digital content. “Starting today, we're going to show more stories from news sources in your local town or city," Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg wrote on his page. "If you follow a local publisher or if someone shares a local story, it may show up higher in News Feed. We're starting this first in the US, and our goal is to expand to more countries this year.”

According to the announcement, Facebook will promote the publishers like The New York Timesand The USA Today. However, the idea is to push the content from the publishers targeting the regional users. The local stories that will be promoted on the platform will include local sports, arts, and human-interest stories. On 19th January, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will promote "news that is trustworthy, informative, and local" going forward.  By now, we have got the announcement about the ‘trustworthy’ and ‘local’ news feed changes, but the new update focusing on the ‘informative’ news is yet to come.