The Facebook “News Feed” no longer exists. After more than 15 years, the company is officially renaming its core feature, which will now be known simply as “Feed”. The company announced the name change in
The move, which comes just months after Mark Zuckerberg announced he was renaming the company, is yet another sign that Facebook is trying to change perceptions of its core products. In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said the new moniker should “better reflect the diverse content people see in their feeds.” They added that the new name will not change how the feature works in the app.
Still, the removal of “news” from the name will likely be seen as a symbol of the company’s shifting priorities as it looks to a future centered on the metaverse, not its social media app. Facebook’s treatment News has been a thorny issue for the company. Company executives have argued for years that the news is just a of what people share on the platform, and the company has completely reoriented its feed to focus on Facebook friends rather than publishers. (This change came with its own unintended consequences, according to Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. )
More recently, Facebook has tried to counter the perception that polarizing content, particularly from far-right personalities, dominates its Feed. The company has published reports on “widely viewed content”, which argue that political content is not . And in response to a widely cited Twitter account ranking top Facebook pages using analytics data from CrowdTangle, the company published its own take on which publishers have the most reach on the platform. These questions have also been central to researchers’ struggle to understand how content spreads on Facebook. Of course, a superficial name change doesn’t solve any of these problems, but it could help Facebook further bolster its claims that the company is embarking on a new era that won’t be defined by the social networking app that now sees engagement on Facebook. decline.
All products recommended by Ploonge are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.