Facebook to expand local feature

Facebook is very cautiously putting in place its local feature titled “Today In”. It will be used to show users news from local news outlets, government entities and community groups. In January this year, Facebook launched the feature first in six cities of the USA. Then it was expanded to twenty-five more cities. And will be extended to 400 more cities in the USA and a few in Australia soon.

This move has been viewed as a step by Facebook in improving its already tarnished standing. It has been previously alleged to be in a soup for misinformation and fake news. It also has been blamed to indirectly infringe in the election process.

For this Facebook would not pay any local agencies for content. Facebook’s Journalism Project is credited with creating “Today In”. They consider it an evolution of its previous “Trending” feature. This feature was pretty popular among Facebook’s users, but was rife with all kinds of biased misinformation. Facebook says it has learnt from its past mistakes and has developed this feature to bring all communities together and also help the local news agencies grow as well.

The posts have no human involvement and have been curated through Artificial Intelligence. For now, the “Today In” is based solely on geography but will be changed according to the personal information entered.

Still, as the feature expands, Facebook has to improvise to weed out fake news, guard against misuse.

Also see: https://kalingatv.com/state/youth-makes-puri-sakhigopal-temple-interior-pictures-viral-on-facebook/