Facebook rebrands its News Feed to Feed to ‘better reflect the diverse content people see’ on the app
- Meta has announced it is changing the name of Facebook’s News Feed to ‘Feed’
- Aim is to ‘better reflect the diverse content people see’ on the social media site
- Feature allows users to scroll through what their friends and family have shared
- But Facebook users have poked fun at the change, saying ‘omg that’s so creative’
Meta is changing the name of Facebook’s News Feed in an attempt to ‘better reflect the diverse content people see’ on the social media site.
It will now be known simply as ‘Feed’, a rather modest change which many Facebook users have poked fun at.
One Tweeted: ‘Omg that’s so creative. How did you come up with the name?’
Another added: ‘Only took 349 brainstorm meetings to decide this.’
The feature, which is the site’s main interface and allows users to scroll through what their friends and family have shared, has been known as News Feed ever since it was first introduced more than 15 years ago.
Meta is changing the name of Facebook’s News Feed in an attempt to ‘better reflect the diverse content people see’ on the social media site
It will now be known simply as ‘Feed’, a rather modest change which many Facebook users poked fun at. One Tweeted: ‘Omg that’s so creative. How did you come up with the name?’
HOW HAS FACEBOOK CHANGED THE WAY IT PRIORITISES POSTS IN YOUR NEWS FEED?
Up until 2018, Facebook prioritised material that its algorithms thought people would engage with through comments, ‘likes’ or other ways of showing interest.
But founder Mark Zuckerberg said he wanted to change the focus to help users have ‘more meaningful social interactions.’ The move followed his resolution to ‘fix’ the site.
It was also in response to criticism that Facebook and its social media competitors reinforce users’ views on social and political issues.
Critics claim that sites like Facebook lead to addictive viewing habits.
Zuckerberg cited research that suggests reading ‘passively’ on social media was damaging for people’s mental health, while interacting proactively with friends was positive.
According to Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s then New Feed boss, the change involved:
- Posts from friends and family getting more prominence than video, news, and other content from formal Facebook pages, such as companies and celebrities
- The number of comments on a post counting more than the number of Likes
- Posts where people have spent the time to write lengthy comments being prioritised over those with only short comments
- While news and video still appear in News Feed, the number of friends sharing it was made to matter more than its overall popularity
Announcing the change, Facebook tweeted: ‘Starting today, our News Feed will now be known as “Feed.” Happy scrolling!’
A spokesperson told The Verge it was ‘just a name change to better reflect the diverse content people see on their Feeds’, before adding that it ‘does not impact the app experience more broadly.’
However, many commentators and users have suggested the change is a way of deflecting controversy associated with Facebook’s distribution of news stories.
Research has shown that misinformation gets a lot more engagement on the site than fact-based reporting, and regulators have been looking into how big tech companies algorithmically rank content in their feeds.
One Twitter user, John de Guzman, wrote: ‘Suuuuuureeee. Now you’ll be able to pretend people don’t get their news from you. Good one.’
Another added: ‘Well, that’s certainly easier than dealing with the right-wing propaganda problem in the News Feed.
‘”We don’t call it News anymore, not our problem!”‘
Twitter user Hillary Rowe wrote: ‘Wouldn’t want to be accused of distributing news Good to know.’
Meta has vowed to reduce the amount of political content that shows up on people’s News Feeds, with even the company’s own research suggesting that its algorithm could push politicians to take more extreme positions.
Changing the News Feed name could also help clear up potential confusion within the app.
When it was introduced, Facebook didn’t also have a News tab that users could confuse it with.
According to a memo sent to Facebook employees, Meta said the News Feed name made people think it was a place for news stories rather than posts from friends and relatives.
It comes as it emerged that Meta employees now have a new term to refer to themselves: Metamates.
During a meeting on Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly shared a list of new corporate values that his company will go by.
One of them was the catchphrase ‘Meta, Metamates, me,’ designating the order of importance by which employees should rank their own interests vs. their colleagues’ and the company’s well-being.
There are three main factors that go into determining which suggested posts appear in your News Feed, according to Facebook.
A post may be suggested for you if other people who interacted with the post also previously interacted with the same group, Page, or post as you.
Alternatively, if you’ve recently engaged with a certain topic on Facebook, the platform may suggest other posts that are related to that topic.
The other main area is location. You may see a suggested post based on where you are and what people near you are interacting with on Facebook.
Between March 2020 and October 2020, Facebook and Instagram removed 12 million pieces of misinformation related to Covid-19.
In April of that year alone, it put warning labels on about 50 million pieces of content, with 95 per cent of people who saw the label not clicking past to view the content.
Between March and October 2020, it put warning labels on 167 million pieces of content.
FACEBOOK’S PRIVACY DISASTERS
April 2020: Facebook hackers leaked phone numbers and personal data from 553 million users online.
July 2019: Facebook data scandal: Social network is fined $5billion over ‘inappropriate’ sharing of users’ personal information
March 2019: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised to rebuild based on six ‘privacy-focused’ principles:
- Private interactions
- Encryption
- Reducing permanence
- Safety
- Interoperability
- Secure data storage
Zuckerberg promised end-to-end encryption for all of its messaging services, which will be combined in a way that allows users to communicate across WhatsApp, Instagram Direct, and Facebook Messenger.
December 2018: Facebook comes under fire after a bombshell report discovered the firm allowed over 150 companies, including Netflix, Spotify and Bing, to access unprecedented amounts of user data, such as private messages.
Some of these ‘partners’ had the ability to read, write, and delete Facebook users’ private messages and to see all participants on a thread.
It also allowed Microsoft’s search engine, known as Bing, to see the name of all Facebook users’ friends without their consent.
Amazon was allowed to obtain users’ names and contact information through their friends, and Yahoo could view streams of friends’ posts.
September 2018: Facebook disclosed that it had been hit by its worst ever data breach, affecting 50 million users – including those of Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg.
Attackers exploited the site’s ‘View As’ feature, which lets people see what their profiles look like to other users.
Facebook (file image) made headlines in March 2018 after the data of 87 million users was improperly accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy
The unknown attackers took advantage of a feature in the code called ‘Access Tokens,’ to take over people’s accounts, potentially giving hackers access to private messages, photos and posts – although Facebook said there was no evidence that had been done.
The hackers also tried to harvest people’s private information, including name, sex and hometown, from Facebook’s systems.
Zuckerberg assured users that passwords and credit card information was not accessed.
As a result of the breach, the firm logged roughly 90 million people out of their accounts as a security measure.
March 2018: Facebook made headlines after the data of 87 million users was improperly accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy.
The disclosure has prompted government inquiries into the company’s privacy practices across the world, and fueled a ‘#deleteFacebook’ movement among consumers.
Communications firm Cambridge Analytica had offices in London, New York, Washington, as well as Brazil and Malaysia.
The company boasts it can ‘find your voters and move them to action’ through data-driven campaigns and a team that includes data scientists and behavioural psychologists.
‘Within the United States alone, we have played a pivotal role in winning presidential races as well as congressional and state elections,’ with data on more than 230 million American voters, Cambridge Analytica claimed on its website.
The company profited from a feature that meant apps could ask for permission to access your own data as well as the data of all your Facebook friends.
The data firm suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix (pictured), after recordings emerged of him making a series of controversial claims, including boasts that Cambridge Analytica had a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump
This meant the company was able to mine the information of 87 million Facebook users even though just 270,000 people gave them permission to do so.
This was designed to help them create software that can predict and influence voters’ choices at the ballot box.
The data firm suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix, after recordings emerged of him making a series of controversial claims, including boasts that Cambridge Analytica had a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump.
This information is said to have been used to help the Brexit campaign in the UK.
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