Facebook to prioritize news feed content with ‘informative’ algorithm

Facebook has never really opened up about how its news feed works, though we keep getting updates from time to time that some changes are coming over. After the last update that gave preference to friends and family over publishers, the networking giant will now start predicting stories that are informative and highlighting them to people if they’re “related to their interests, if they engage people in broader discussions, and if they contain news” i.e. back to the news.

Every day, Facebook polls tens of thousands of people globally for its Feed Quality Program, according to a blog post. “We look at the stories that people tell us they find informative” on a scale of one to five—with one being defined as “really not informative” and five being “really informative,” the post explained.

The feedback from these surveys is combined with data about how users interact on the social network, including “your relationship with the person or publisher that posted, or what you choose to click on, comment on or share.” The algorithm factors in about 100,000 different signals altogether to determine a “relevancy score” that determines what you see on the social network. No two users have identical news feeds, the company has said.

“This could be a news article on a current event,” Facebook writes. But since everyone has a subjective view of what’s informative, it could also be “a story about your favorite celebrity, a piece of local news, a review of an upcoming movie, a recipe, or anything that informs you.”

As such, Facebook said many users may not notice a difference when using the news feed, which is the first thing any Facebook user sees when opening the social network’s namesake app or website.

“We anticipate that most pages won’t see any significant changes to their distribution in the news feed,” the company said, regarding sharing by businesses, politicians, celebrities and other brand-based accounts. “Some pages might see a small increase in referral traffic, and some pages might see minor decreases.”