By Campbell Brown, Facebook VP, Global News Partnerships and Jon Levin, Facebook Product Manager
When Facebook ask people what kind of news they want to see on Facebook, they continually tell us they want news stories that are credible and informative.
Facebook is updating the way news stories are ranked in News Feed to prioritize original reporting and stories with transparent authorship. These signals are based on user research and were built with feedback from news publishers and academic experts. They will only apply to news content.
Original News Content
Original reporting plays an important role in informing people around the world, from breaking a news story, to creating an in-depth investigative report, uncovering new facts and data, sharing critical updates in times of crisis, or broadcasting eyewitness reports. This important journalism takes time and expertise, and we want to ensure that it’s prioritized on Facebook.
We will now prioritize articles in News Feed that we identify as original reporting on a developing story or topic. We do this by looking at groups of articles on a particular story topic and identifying the ones most often cited as the original source. We’ll start by identifying original reporting in English language news and will do the same for news in other languages in the future.
Most of the news stories people see in News Feed are from sources they or their friends follow, and that won’t change. When multiple stories are shared by publishers and are available in a person’s News Feed, we will boost the more original one which will help it get more distribution. Defining original reporting and the standards for it are complex, so we will continue to work with publishers and academics to refine this approach over time.
Transparent Authorship
We are also starting to demote news content that does not have transparent information about the publisher’s editorial staff. We will review news articles for bylines or a staff page on the publisher’s website that lists the first and last names of reporters or other editorial staff. We’ve found that publishers who do not include this information often lack credibility to readers and produce content with clickbait or ad farms, all content people tell us they don’t want to see on Facebook.
How Will These Changes Impact Publishers’ Content?
Original news and reporting may see an increase in distribution as a result of these changes, but it’s important to remember that News Feed uses a variety of ranking signals to prioritize content. You can learn more about how we rank publisher content in News Feed here. We anticipate most news publishers won’t see significant changes to their distribution in News Feed as a result of these updates.
