Facebook said Wednesday it would give friends
and family more prominence on user feeds, a
move that may hurt media outlets that rely on the
network to draw readers.
The social media giant said in a statement that
the goal of the “news feed,” which appears when
users log in, “is to show people the stories that
are most relevant to them” and that its update
“helps you see more posts from your friends and
family.”
The move comes after the world’s biggest social
network came under scrutiny over allegations by
a former contractor that it was suppressing some
political viewpoints in its “trending topics.”
Facebook said its review found no bias, but that
it would take steps to reassure users about the
neutrality of the platform.
Its vice president Adam Mosseri said in a blog
post that an updated algorithm that determines
what users see would help people find
information that matters to them.
“We are not in the business of picking which
issues the world should read about,” he wrote.
“We are in the business of connecting people
and ideas — and matching people with the
stories they find most meaningful.
“Our integrity depends on being inclusive of all
perspectives and viewpoints, and using ranking to
connect people with the stories and sources they
find the most meaningful and engaging.”
Even though Facebook has emphasized it does
not want to be a media provider, surveys show it
has become a key source of news, even if users
are drawn to the network for other reasons.
A Pew Research Center survey last month found
66 percent of US Facebook users get at least
some news on the platform.
Global trends are similar. A survey across 26
countries by Oxford University’s Reuters Institute
for the Study of Journalism found 51 percent of
respondents indicating they use social media for
news, with 12 percent using it as their main news
source.
Facebook was by far the most important source,
used by 44 percent in the total survey.
Facebook engineering director Lars Backstrom
said the update “may cause reach and referral
traffic to decline for some pages,” but noted that
one of the factors in prioritizing posts will be
“sharing” by users.
– Worries for media –
The latest tweak in the algorithm could thus
impact news organizations that use Facebook
and its 1.6 billion users to drive traffic and
generate advertising revenues.
“This is another step in the continued devaluation
of large publisher followings on Facebook,” said
Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman
Journalism Lab at Harvard University.
The shift is “likely to be a momentous one for
news organizations that rely heavily on Facebook
as a major source of referral traffic,” said
Benjamin Mullin of the Poynter Institute in a blog
post.
But Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism
professor, said the change was positive because
it offers some transparency and focuses on
Facebook users themselves.
“Your social graph comes first, not the public
world,” Rosen said on his blog.
The tweak means that Facebook is “committed
to the personalization of News Feed as a kind of
right that users have,” Rosen wrote.
