See the stories that matter most to you.
News Feed
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Connecting people to the stories that matter most to them
Our goal with News Feed is to show you the stories that matter most to you, every time you visit Facebook. Your News Feed is a personalized, ever-changing collection of photos, videos, links, and updates from the friends, family, businesses, and news sources you've connected to on Facebook.
Showing stories that are meaningful and informative
People use News Feed everyday to stay in touch with friends and family and to stay informed about the world around them.
How News Feed Works
One
How we evaluate the stories that are most relevant to yours
We look at three main signals to estimate how relevant we think a post will be to you:
- Who posted it: The friends, family, news sources, businesses, and public figures you interact with most are prioritized in your News Feed
- Type of content: We prioritize the type of content you interact with most frequently, whether it's photos, videos, or links you favor.
- Interactions with the post: Posts that have a lot of likes, reactions, comments, and shares (especially from people you interact with most)
Posts are ordered to show you top stories first.
- Based on these signals, each post is assigned a ranking to determine where it appears in your News Feed and which stories appear first.
Two
People can shape their News Feed
We don't always get it right and ultimately you are the only one who knows what's most meaningful to you, so we give you specific controls to customize your experience.
- News Feed Preferences: tap any of the News Feed Preferences to see how they work.
- Customize right from your News Feed: Additionally, with a single tap, you can improve your News Feed directly from any post. The drop-down menu gives you customization options such as Hide or Unfollow
Three
How we evaluate how we're doing
Through our Feed quality program, we make it a priority to reach out to people like you to learn and incorporate feedback so we can continue to improve your News Feed experience. Three examples of ways we're talking to people on an ongoing basis:
- One on one interviews with a wide set of people across the globe
- Feed quality panel is a diverse group of people who continually review and provide feedback on their News Feeds.
- Global surveys of 10s of thousands of people everyday.
How to topics
Keep informed about the latest updates in News Feed by visiting our News Feed FYI blog posts.
We are continually working to improve News Feed, and we're constantly iterating to improve the experience for people on Facebook. We’ve heard from our users and publishers that we can do a better job of communicating these updates. News Feed FYI blog posts highlight major updates to News Feed and explain the thinking behind them.
Improving the Integrity of News Feed: Principles for Publishers
The goal of News Feed is to connect people to the stories they care about most. When we make updates to News Feed, we rely on a set of core values which guide our work. These News Feed values, along with Facebook’s Community Standards, should always help inform the way people think about publishing on Facebook.
Recently we’ve announced several updates to News Feed which are specifically focused on improving the integrity of the information you find on Facebook. This work is targeting misinformation, sensationalism, clickbait and posts that fall outside of our Community Standards. As we continue this effort, here are some basic guideposts for publishers to keep in mind to reach their audience on Facebook.
Want timely updates about News Feed and other products?
Join our News, Media and Publishing Group for the latest news and discussions from the Facebook Media Partnerships team.
Best Practices
People on Facebook Value Meaningful, Informative Stories
People expect the stories in their feed to be meaningful to them — and we have learned over time that people value stories that they consider informative. We are not in the business of picking which issues the world should read about, but we are in the business of connecting people with the stories they find most meaningful. Publishers should create meaningful and informative stories that their audiences will find interesting.
- Meaningful: When ranking News Feed based on how meaningful each story is to each person, we look at many personal signals, such as how close someone is to the person or page posting, stories they’d want to talk to their friends and family about, spend time reading, and videos they’d spend time watching. We also look at more universal signals like the overall engagement (likes, comments, shares) that a post has. Publishers should focus on understanding the audiences they want to reach, so they can create content meaningful to them.
- Informative: One of our News Feed values is that feed should be informative, because people value stories that they consider informative. Something that one person finds informative or interesting may be different from what another person finds informative or interesting — this could be a post about a current event, a story about a celebrity, a piece of local news, or a recipe. We’re always working to better understand what is informative to each person, so those stories appear higher up in their feed. Publishers should focus on creating content their audiences will find new, interesting, and informative.
People on Facebook Value Accurate, Authentic Content
As we’ve said previously, people want to see accurate information on Facebook, and so do we. People tell us that authentic stories are the ones that resonate most. So we work hard to understand what type of posts people consider genuine, so we can rank them higher in News Feed. And we work to understand what kinds of stories people find misleading, sensational and spammy, to make sure people see those less. Publishers should focus on posting accurate, authentic content.
- Clear headlines: Pages should avoid headlines that withhold information required to understand what the content of the article is and headlines that exaggerate or sensationalize the article to create misleading expectations. See more best practices here.
- Spam: Pages should should not deliberately try to manipulate News Feed to get more distribution than they normally would.
- Accurate information: We know there is misinformation on Facebook, and we take this very seriously. False information is harmful to our community, it makes the world less informed, and it erodes trust.
People on Facebook Value Standards for Safe, Respectful Behavior
Facebook is a community of people. Our Community Standards reflect our collective values for what should and should not be allowed on the platform. These policies will help you understand what type of sharing is allowed on Facebook, and what type of content is out-of-bounds. We think it’s possible to be inclusive without making Facebook a place where people are subjected to attacks, hate, inappropriate content, or other harmful behavior.
We believe strongly that people should feel – and be – safe and respectful when they use Facebook. To help balance these needs and interests of a diverse community, we may remove certain kinds of sensitive content or limit the audience that sees it. Publishers should follow our Community Standards.
Keeping you safe: We remove content, disable accounts, and work with law enforcement when we believe there is a genuine risk of physical harm or direct threats to public safety. Learn more about how Facebook handles abusive content here.
Encouraging respectful behavior: To serve the needs of our diverse community, we may remove or limit audiences for certain kinds of sensitive content. This includes nudity, hate speech, violence and graphic content.
See the stories that matter most to you.
News Feed