Facebook announced in their news room on the 30th June an update to the Facebook organic algorithm. They announce that when they have surveyed their users the type of news stories that they want to see on the platform was news that was original and transparent.
So, as of the end of last month the news feed will prioritize original stories with transparent authorship, the signals are based on feedback from news publishers and academic experts and will only apply to news results.
News Originality
Facebook announced that it understands that journalism takes time and expertise and they are trying to prioritize this in their feeds. So breaking news stories with in-depth investigation with new facts and data, sharing critical updates or broadcasting eyewitness reports will be markers of originality.
The platform will also group articles on a particular story or topic and the article that is most cited as the original source will be prioritized. This won’t really affect articles that are shared, but if there are similar stories around a similar article the goal is to prioritise the more original and most cited one.
Authorship
Sources that are not transparent about the publishers editorial staff are going to start seeing their content being demoted. Facebook has said that there is a strong correlation on articles that don’t include and author information and poor quality content. Editorial transparency is a professional standard but it is understood that sometimes this can put journalists at risk so this roll out is going to be in limited markets to start with.