Facebook Held Their Own Referendum And This Is What We Know

Think fewer news articles and more videos of fluffy dogs

Facebook Held Their Own Referendum And This Is What We Know

by Alyss Bowen |
Published on

While everyone's busy talking about Brexit and Boris Johnson, Facebook have been holding their own referendum. Asking their users what content they favour, the social media site announced that they would be making major alternations to its news feed algorithm. Changes that mean less editorial, and more content from your best friends and family. Here’s what we know so far.

Facebook’s algorithm works like this, when you log into the social platform it can predict if you will like, click, comment or share a post. Kind of creepy right? So whenever you look at your news feed, the posts you see have been personally placed on your feed, because Facebook knows those are the ones you’re more likely to engage and react to.

Until now, lots of those posts you’ve been seeing all over your feed have been from publishers, mostly about #Brexit since last week. Now Facebook have decided to switch things up and favour personal content from people, rather than brands, publishers and the media. This might mean more videos of cute puppies falling asleep, but it might also mean a significant drop in traffic or major media outlets. The reason for doing this? The social networking site said it’s members had expressed concerns that they were missing ‘important updates’ from the people they cared about.

Facebook posted a blog post about the change, titled ’News Feed Values,’ in which they discuss the reason behind this change. They go into detail about the success of getting people the stories that matter to them most, how our newsfeed should be subject, personal, and unique. Facebook’s Adam Mosseri told TechCrunch that by “solidifying those values, users may gain faith that Facebook doesn’t have ulterior motives when deciding the best content to show them.”

So what does this mean for publishers? Well, first things firsts it will probably result in a drop in traffic, that’s a given. But if publishers are doing it right, content tailored to their audience will still be shared and seen within the news feed. If you're sat there wondering if this means you'll get less news and more memes, dont worry We're obviously all incredibly interested in #hiddleswift and share the hell out of stories about the new couple, so don't expect that to disappear from your feed anytime soon.

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Follow Alyss on Twitter @alyssbowen

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.

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