Remember writing on your friend’s “wall” before the Facebook timeline? Now, the Facebook “news feed” will join the graveyard of anachronisms in our memories. Henceforth, the “news feed’ will now be known as just the “feed.”
This decision could be read as an attempt to separate Facebook from its reputation as a hub of misinformation — they’ve quite literally taken the news out of the news feed. But in other realms of the app, Facebook is doubling-down on its desire to operate as a news source. Yesterday, Facebook announced that it is launching Facebook News in France. So, renaming the news feed could distinguish those posts — which include updates from friends, groups, pages, events and more — from the actual Facebook News section.
“Facebook News is a dedicated tab on Facebook in the bookmarks section that will spotlight news stories from a diverse range of reliable and relevant news sources,” the company wrote in a blog post. “As part of our ongoing commitment to journalism and content creation at Meta, this new tab will give people a dedicated space to seek out stories that matter the most to them, whilst ensuring original reporting is given a wider reach to audiences across the country.”
A team of independent journalists will help curate France’s Facebook News to ensure “a fair overview of news published.” Plus, Facebook has become a publisher in its own right through Bulletin, its curated slate of newsletters.
“We’ve had this change planned for some time. We think Feed is a better reflection of the broad variety of content people see as they scroll. This not related to the News Tab announcement in France,” a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch.
Update, 2/15/22, 1:40 PM: Added comment from Facebook.