Facebook is always looking to expand its features and audience base. This has never been shown better than over the last few months, with the introduction of a new Facebook design, Facebook Shops and Facebook Messenger Rooms. Essentially anything Facebook can introduce to keep users on its mobile and desktop platform for longer is something they are interested in doing! With its newest development, Facebook has now well and truly sent a friend request to the news industry.
Facebook has launched a new feature called Facebook News, aimed at containing the most trustworthy global and local news within the Facebook experience. In this article our team are breaking down everything you need to know about Facebook News.
What Is Facebook News?
Facebook News is Facebook’s strongest action to date to introduce an all-in-one news platform within the Facebook mobile and desktop experience. Sure, news has been a part of Facebook for years, however this is definitely different. Facebook News is a more controlled environment for news, vastly different from the free-for-all posting across the general Facebook feed.
It will appear as a tab just like notifications and Facebook video, and will be filled with news from publications which the Facebook team have vetted and approved. This is the key difference to the general Facebook news feed, in which users can post any news on the internet. Having this form of editorial control will be key to controlling the quality of the Facebook news feature. Users will be able to choose features like breaking news alerts or even hear news from specific topics like ‘Covid-19’.
In order to become one of the approved publishers within Facebook news, publishers will need to have a significantly large audience and comply with Facebook’s Community Standards. Although this does sound like the tolling of a bell for local news sources, of which many of whom have been significantly impacted by social media news already, this isn’t necessarily the case. As reported by TechCrunch, Facebook has already partnered with thousands of local news agencies and local news will certainly have its place within the Facebook News platform.
So far Facebook News has been just recently rolled out in the US, and is expected to roll out globally over the next 12 months. Take a look at the video below from Facebook for a quick introduction on how Facebook News will work on the platform:
📰 Introducing Facebook News – a dedicated news tab starting to roll out today in the US pic.twitter.com/Mrkx6CGWaq
— Facebook (@Facebook) October 25, 2019
Will It Be Moderated?
One of the major concerns with news platforms hosted on social media sites is the propensity for fake and harmful news to fester. Most of us are already aware of how frequently issues like this have popped up in the past, whether it be in the time of elections or even scientific discussions like the current Covid-19 pandemic. This past activity does raise the question of how ‘healthy’ or ‘harmful’ Facebook News can be.
The good news is, pun intended, there will be a combination of human and algorithm monitoring for all Facebook News content. Although we are slightly hesitant in trusting the algorithm side of this process given how that has gone previously, having this combination at the forefront is crucial to ensuring that Facebook News begins and remains as a place to go for factual news and reporting. For the time being, it appears as Facebook has put in place what is needed to keep Facebook News above the news trustworthiness of the general Facebook feed.
What Are Your Thoughts?
What do you think about this new Facebook News feature from the Facebook team? Will you be using Facebook News as your main news source? Do you think the publishing vetting process and content auditing from humans and algorithms will work in curbing any introduction of false and harmful reporting? We think Facebook news has the potential to become an incredibly useful and informational tool for the platform if executed correctly.
This news was first broken by the amazing TechCrunch team. Click here to check out their full article on Facebook News.
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