Published on 29 Jun 2016
If
you’ve ever wondered how Facebook decides what goes into your feed,
well, now you can find out. In a rather surprising move of transparency,
Facebook is publishing a paper explaining its News Feed Values. The
long and the short of it is that Facebook puts friends and family first,
it doesn’t squash diverse ideas, and Spam is on its way out, while user
controls that better manage what you see are in.
As of today, that friends-first attitude is being implemented formally with an algorithm change which will put your friends posts up top, well before you might see any sponsored content, or even posts from news outlets and listicles from other social media sites. It’s a big shift for Facebook, which seems to believe that if you like using Facebook more, then you’ll use it more often, and that’s a boon to ad sales, no matter where those ads end up appearing in your feed.
As of today, that friends-first attitude is being implemented formally with an algorithm change which will put your friends posts up top, well before you might see any sponsored content, or even posts from news outlets and listicles from other social media sites. It’s a big shift for Facebook, which seems to believe that if you like using Facebook more, then you’ll use it more often, and that’s a boon to ad sales, no matter where those ads end up appearing in your feed.
