After 15 years, Facebook is changing the name of its home page in an effort to move away from the word “news.”
Meta has announced that Facebook will now be changing the name of News Feed into “Feed.”
Facebook users have been accustomed to calling the app’s main interface “News Feed,” as the name hasn’t changed since the social media platform came into existence almost 16 years ago. Over the years, News Feed is the tab where users can find out the latest news from friends, families, and brands they follow.
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Facebook says that this is “just a name change to better reflect the diverse content people see on their Feeds” and that the change “does not impact the app experience more broadly.”
Starting today, our News Feed will now be known as "Feed." Happy scrolling! pic.twitter.com/T6rjO9qzFc
— Facebook (@facebook) February 15, 2022
It’s clear, though, that Facebook seems to want to move user attention away from news stories. In September 2021, researchers demonstrated in a report that fake news sparks way more engagement than official news on the platform.
The research prompted investigations over how the platform’s algorithm swaying toward the sensationalism of misinformation could be profiting Facebook.
Meta also recently announced that the company is working on reducing the amount of political content on Feed.