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| Facebook renames its News Feed after 15 years |
Meta is changing the Facebook news feed, which is the main part of the service that users browse to see content shared by friends and family.
According to a tweet from the company, the news feed will now be called "Feed." The name News Feed has been around since the feature came out over 15 years ago.
It's a big change in a way. Facebook is one of the most used platforms in the world and Feed is its main interface.
But on the flip side, Facebook spokeswoman Dami Oviezo said it's just a name change to better reflect the diverse content people see in the feed. This change will not further affect the app experience.
The name change appears to reflect Facebook's troubled relationship with news distribution. Research shows that misinformation has a higher engagement on the platform than real-world reports.
Regulators are studying how big tech companies categorize content in algorithmically sorted streams.
Meta says it is working to reduce the amount of political content that appears on Internet users' home pages. His research shows that news algorithms can push politicians to take more extreme positions.
Changing the name also helps eliminate potential confusion in the application. When Facebook launched its News Feed over a decade ago, Facebook didn't have a News tab.
Meta said in a staff memo that the name of the newsfeed led people to believe it was a place to post messages, not messages from friends.
Facebook is changing the name from News Feed to Feed
The company announced that it will launch a news tab in France. So by renaming your newsfeed, you can differentiate these posts (including updates from friends, groups, Pages, events, etc.) from the actual news section.
“News is a dedicated Facebook tab in the bookmarks section that highlights news from a variety of reliable and relevant news sources,” the company wrote in a blog post.
“As part of our ongoing commitment to journalism and content creation at META, this new tab provides a dedicated section for people to find the stories that matter most to them, while ensuring that more original coverage reaches a local audience.”
A team of freelance journalists helps organize Facebook News in France to ensure a fair view of the news published. In addition, Facebook became its own publisher through Bulletin, a curated list of newsletters.
A company spokesperson said: "We've been anticipating this change for some time. We believe the feed better reflects the diversity of content people see as they scroll. It has nothing to do with French poster ads."