Facebook is planning to reconfigure its News Feed algorithms. After its confrontation with lawmakers in its role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol, the company has announced that it will roll out a series of News Feed ranking tests that will ask users to provide feedback about the posts they’re seeing.
These will later be incorporated into Facebook’s News Feed ranking process. Facebook will be looking specifically to learn what content people find inspirational, what content they want to see less of (example politics), and what other topics they’re generally interested in, among others.
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This will be done through a series of global tests, one of which will involve a survey directly beneath the post itself.
Another test will work on the Facebook News Feed experience to reflect what people want to see.
Till now, Facebook prioritized showing you content from friends, Groups and Pages you’ve chosen to follow. Though originally algorithmically crafted to show you posts based on a variety of signals, however, Facebook’s third test looks to gain feedback about what people want to see as a whole rather than focusing on what they already follow.
Through experience, Facebook has found that although you may follow a person, you may not like what they post on Facebook. Looking to tackle this problem and allow people to see other points of view rather than just reinforce their own. Facebook will use the third test to ask people whether they want to see more or fewer posts on certain topics, like cooking, sports, or politics, and more. Based on users’ collective feedback, Facebook will adjust its algorithms to show more content people say they’re interested in, and fewer posts about topics they don’t want to see.
Although it is unclear whether allowing users to choose the content they want to see will solve the problem, the test is more about making people feel more positive.
As the data is collected from the tests, Facebook will incorporate the learnings into its News Feed ranking algorithms. It is still unclear the extent to which it will be adjusting the algorithm on a global basis versus simply customizing the experience for end-users on a more individual basis over time.
The tests, however, will be run over the next few months, the company says.