Facebook rolls out dedicated news section in US

Facebook has rolled out its dedicated News section in the US. The feature was announced back in October 2019 and was under limited testing since then.

Facebook News will show users news stories, topics, publishers, depending on the user’s engagement.

“For News specifically, we look at people’s engagement and interest with topics across stories and publishers. These signals allow Facebook News to better serve people looking for the biggest stories of the day to catch up, provide a personalised, relevant news experience, and also serve a range of interests when they visit Facebook News,” Facebook said.

The team that helps select these stories is made up of journalists with experience in a diverse range of newsrooms. This team will sort through what news organisations are reporting, and select stories according to the guidelines to give people an overview of the day’s news.

Users can also hide publishers or topics they do not want to see. The company is developing additional tools that will let users add their sources and location, which will help Facebook show them more relevant local news, as well as tie their paid subscriptions to Facebook News.

There will be four main categories — general, topical, diverse and local news.

As the name suggests, Facebook will include local news across all US markets from local publishers that meet its integrity criteria.

Diverse news category will be focused towards key communities that fall under the five racial and ethnic groups defined by the US Census: Black/African-American, Latino/Hispanic, Asian, American Indian and Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. The rollout of this section comes during the Black Lives Matter protests in the US, which began after a man named George Black died after a police officer knelt on his neck for eight minutes.

Under General news, Facebook will show general news publication stories from outlets that publish across a range of topics. Lastly, topical news will focus on a particular genre or beat like business, science, sports, etc.

How is Facebook identifying which publishers fit into these categories? Facebook said that it has developed a news page index in collaboration with news publishers, industry groups and academics to identify news Pages on Facebook. These news pages must meet all guidelines to be registered in the News Page Index.

Publishers also need to serve a large audience. The social media company has defined size thresholds for each category to objectively determine eligibility within these categories, provided that the publisher meets all of the other criteria.

The feature is being currently rolled out in the US. The company has not yet revealed when it plans to release Facebook News globally.