Facebook today announced changes to the News Feed to better display relevant stories. As part of the change, Facebook is rolling out new signals to “better identify and rank authentic content” as well as a new real-time prediction algorithm to spot stories faster that might be relevant to you.
First, Facebook new signals taps one of its core values — ‘authentic communication’ — to bring stories to your News Feed that have a higher chance of resonating — not those considered “misleading, sensational, or spammy.”
When ranking content, Facebook considers signals such as how close you are to the person or Page posting, as well as universal signals — likes, comments, and shares.
Updated today are new universal signals to help gauge a posts authenticity.
To do this, Facebook first attempts to identify Pages known for posting spam or trying to game the algorithm through means it deems inappropriate, like asking for likes, shares, or comments. This data is then used to train a model to continually identify these types of posts in an attempt to keep them out of your News Feed. For example, if posts are often being hidden, that acts an indicator that this type of content isn’t your cup of tea.
For content deemed authentic, it’ll appear higher in your news Feed.
Next, Facebook wants to get faster at spotting authentic content and getting it into your feed faster. The update today notes how universal signals (likes, shares, comments) change in real time. For example, if an article from The Washington Post (a Page you subscribe to) is generating a lot of buzz, the algorithm will deem this important and place it higher in your feed, quicker.
As always, Facebook doesn’t anticipate this change to negatively affect most Pages.
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