Facebook is committed to delivering local news to readers around the world.
The social network announced in January that it would update its News Feed to prioritize local news. At the time, the update was only for U.S. users. Today, Facebook’s head of news product Alex Hardiman and head of news partnerships Campbell Brown announced in a blog post that the changes will roll out globally.
The update will prioritize outlets that cover not only one city, but multiple nearby cities as well. “By expanding the scope of what may be considered local to people, we’re including other cities that people may care about and connecting people to local publishers from those cities,” the blog post reads.
Why are local outlets better than national outlets? That’s not clear, but according to Zuck himself, it’s what the users want.
“When I traveled around the country last year, one theme people kept telling me is how much we all have in common if we can get past some of the most divisive national issues,” Facebook’s CEO said in a status. “Many people told me they thought that if we could turn down the temperature on the more divisive issues and instead focus on concrete local issues, then we’d all make more progress together.”
Meanwhile, Facebook’s decision to prioritize posts from family and friends over those of media and brands continues to send the traffic of news sources around the country plummeting.
