Significant changes coming to Facebook

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Facebook plans to bring significant changes in the way the news feed is filtered by its complex algorithms, with emphasis on private posts from friends and family of users, and degrading the public posts by business and media information.

The changes that will take place over the next few weeks are expected to reduce the popularity of news, videos and photos by companies and the media, and may reduce the spread of fake news and misinformation for which Facebook is receiving even stronger criticism.

The 33-year-old head of the largest social networking tool, Mark Zackerberg, which has more than two billion monthly users, said that content generated by friends would be preferred, feeding discussions between the family and the friendly environment.

In practice, this eg. means that users will soon be more likely to see something in the news feed posted by a friend than a “viral” video. As Zackerberg admitted, this also means that all kinds of companies and organizations will see their content diminished in popularity.

“We have received reactions from our community that public content -corporate, branded and media posts- exfoliates our personal moments that lead us to be more connected with each other,

Zackerberg said, according to the BBC and the Reuters agency.

As he said, he feels responsible for ensuring that Facebook benefits the happiness of people.

“With these changes”,

he stressed

“I expect that the time that people will spend on Facebook will be reduced, but it will also become more valuable”.

With the begging of 2018, Zackerberg had promised that this year will “correct” Facebook and this is the first step in this direction.

“Our focus will no longer be to help Facebook find content relevant to you, but to help you have social interactions that make sense”,

wrote in his new post. He also made it known that there would be other changes in the coming months.

“This is certainly a major change. It will affect publishers a lot, as we will see much less news of them popping up in our news feed”,

said Laura Hazarden Owen of Harvard University’s Niman Journalism Laboratory. She added, however, that it is still unclear what kind of discussions the Facebook altered algorithms will prioritize in the future.

Along the same lines, Gabriel Cann, of the University of Southern California’s Annabelle Communication and Journalism Department, said that the Zackerberg announcement “is a clear assumption” that Facebook has a significant influence on the health of society. He also warned that changes and new priorities may eventually lead to even greater distortions in user information.

“There must be a public debate on the values ​​to be applied to the new Facebook algorithm,”

he stressed.

Source: ANA-MNA

Source: www.capital.gr