We all know that Facebook is going through the biggest crisis in its history with the announcement that Cambridge Analytica misused user data in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. This has caused users to begin deleting their profiles on the social network .
Even so, that’s no reason for Mark Zuckerberg’s class to stand still. For some time now we have shown that the social network was testing in the United States a feature that changed the News Feed to prioritize local news.
Now the social network has announced that it is bringing this news to all users in the world. As we all know, implementing this feature is intended to reduce the amount of Fake News within the social network.
In this way, the social network explains that local news helps users to get involved with local issues and important to their day to day. Alex Hardiman, Facebook news product director, commented on the news:
Now people around the world will see more Facebook news from local sources covering their current city and other cities they may care about
In addition, Facebook hopes that this change will help local producers of journalistic content get more prominence by getting more hits to their pages. The measure will also help users gain access to news from neighboring cities:
We will consider a publisher as a location for multiple cities if people in those cities are more likely than people outside those cities to read articles from the publisher’s domain. By expanding the scope of what can be considered local to people, we are including other cities with which people may be interested and connecting people to local editors of those cities
Will this measure reduce the number of Fake News on Facebook? Tell us your opinion here in the comments.