Facebook is altering its infamous News Feed algorithms to ensure users see more content posted by their circle of friends.
The new system will prioritise posts from pals rather than focus upon posts from Pages a user may be following.
The company says this change is designed to placate members who feel that recent changes aren’t doing enough to ensure friends and family content is given due prominence.
“We’ve heard from our community that people are still worried about missing important updates from the friends they care about,” the company wrote in a blog post.
“For people with many connections this is particularly important, as there are a lot of stories for them to see each day. So we are updating News Feed over the coming weeks so that the things posted by the friends you care about are higher up in your News Feed.”
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Whether this will go over well with Facebook’s media partners remains to be seen.
The company admits that the update will lessen traffic to organisations that rely on Facebook for clicks and sharing of content.
It says those reliant on the sharing of content won’t be too widely affected given they’ll still count as friend posts.
“We encourage Pages to post things that their audience are likely to share with their friends,” the firm said.
From a user perspective, however, this is an encouraging change.
Facebook’s algorithms has long been the subject of debate. Who do they really serve? For once, Zuckerberg and co. are going back to their roots.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.