How do you get your news? Are you part of the 68% of U.S. adults who get their news from social media? Well, beyond helping your dating life, Facebook wants to give curating your news another shot. Facebook will be rolling out a News tab feature in the near feature this fall.
The Information published an internal Facebook memo with details regarding the new feature. Essentially, Facebook will pay participating news publishers to monitor and display their headlines as well as article previews. This will give more power to the editors who will decide what to feature. While giving the highest priority to local news outlets, the team will prioritize the media outlets that report a particular news story first.
Is Facebook a News/ Media Company?
After removing its “Trending” news section, Facebook continues to invest in its media company interests. With growing issues around “fake news” and the transference of misinformation, Mark Zuckerberg addressed his concerns in a blog post in 2017 specifically around the election:
After the election, I made a comment that I thought the idea misinformation on Facebook changed the outcome of the election was a crazy idea. Calling that crazy was dismissive and I regret it. This is too important an issue to be dismissive. But the data we have has always shown that our broader impact — from giving people a voice to enabling candidates to communicate directly to helping millions of people vote — played a far bigger role in this election.
With this in mind, Facebook is aware of its power as a media organization. Giving editors this power as reputable news organizations will provide more trustworthy news shared on this new feature. All in all, Facebook seems to be making moves to fight misinformation and provide legitimate news on their feed.