Your Facebook News Feed Will Start to Show More Local News

In the past few years, local news has suffered greatly. Advertising dollars are no longer remaining with local news outlets, but have moved online primarily, mainly to major platforms such as Facebook and Google.

Yesterday, Monday, January 29th, Facebook announced one of the many changes for 2018, which is making its News Feed prioritize stories from news outlets in areas where its users live.

"Starting today, we're going to show more stories from news sources in your local town or city," CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post yesterday. "If you follow a local publisher or if someone shares a local story, it may show up higher in News Feed. We're starting this first in the US, and our goal is to expand to more countries this year."

Recently, the company has been seriously criticized over "fake news" and the spread of disinformation on their social media app. They have decided to make some serious changes to try and avoid this. Facebook has also implemented a change in sorting the news based on how "trustworthy" users think the sources are.

So what defines a news outlet or publisher as local? Facebook defines the news outlets or publishers as local if its links "are clicked on by readers in a tight geographic area."

Facebook intends to prioritize "news that is trustworthy, informative, and local," says Zuckerberg.