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After it first rolled out to US users back in January, Facebook will now expand its goal to prioritize the inclusion of local news in its News Feed worldwide.
The change will take effect to help local publishers reach audiences in their respective cities, the social media site announced in a blog post yesterday.
Facebook explained that a publisher will be identified as local to multiple cities “if the people in those cities are more likely than the people outside of those cities to read articles from the publisher’s domain.”
It added: “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 social media site also promised to prioritize “high quality” in News Feed that includes “news from sources that are broadly trusted, informative and relevant to local communities.”
“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,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post back in January, when the update was first introduced to US users. /ra
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