New Facebook news feed changes to put friends ahead of media

New York, June 30

Facebook has made changes in news feed ranking to ensure you do not miss updates from families and friends amid the flood of information on the social media platform of over a billion users.

"The goal of News Feed is to show people the stories that are most relevant to them. Today, we're announcing an update to News Feed that helps you see more posts from your friends and family," Facebook executive Adam Mosseri wrote on a blogpost on Wednesday.

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The new changes mean that wedding photographs of your close friend would get more prominence than the stories linked to what happened in Turkey or for that matter in India.

"When we launched News Feed in 2006, it was hard to imagine the challenge we now face: far too much information for any one person to consume," Mosseri said.

"In the decade since, more than a billion people have joined Facebook, and today they share a flood of stories every day. That's why stories in News Feed are ranked? so that people can see what they care about first, and don't miss important stuff from their friends," Mosseri  explained.

"If the ranking is off, people don't engage, and leave dissatisfied. So one of our most important jobs is getting this ranking right," the post said.

The social networking giant recently faced allegations of political bias in the selection or prominence of stories in its "Trending Topics" feature. An internal investigation of the organisation, however, revealed no evidence of any systematic political bias. 

"Facebook was built on the idea of connecting people with their friends and family. That is still the driving principle of News Feed today," Mosseri said.

"We are not in the business of picking which issues the world should read about. We are in the business of connecting people and ideas ? and matching people with the stories they find most meaningful," Mosseri pointed out. — IANS