The News Feed will now just be the Feed. | Image: Facebook
Meta is changing the name of Facebookâs News Feed, the primary part of the service that users scroll through to see what their friends and family have shared. Going forward, itâll just be called the âFeed,â according to a tweet from the company on Tuesday. The âNews Feedâ name had been in place since the feature was first introduced more than 15 years ago.
In some ways, itâs a massive change â Facebook is one of the worldâs most-used platforms, and the Feed is its main interface. On the other hand, it is âjust a name change to better reflect the diverse content people see on their Feeds,â according to an email sent to The Verge by Facebook spokesperson Dami Oyefeso. The change âdoes not impact the app experience more broadly.â
Starting today, our News Feed will now be known as “Feed.” Happy scrolling! pic.twitter.com/T6rjO9qzFc
â Facebook App (@facebookapp) February 15, 2022
Thereâs a lot in a name, though, and the rebranding seems to reflect Facebookâs messy relationship with distributing news stories. Research has shown that misinformation gets significantly more engagement on the platform than fact-based reporting, and regulators have been looking into how big tech companies algorithmically rank content in their feeds. For its part, Meta has said itâs working on reducing the amount of political content that shows up on peopleâs homepages â its own research suggested that the News Feedâs algorithm could push even politicians to take more extreme positions.
Information about politics and current events, rather than posts from your cousin about their engagement, are the types of things youâd expect to find in something called a ânews feed.â Personally, that makes it hard not to read the name change as a subtle reframing of how seriously I should take the content the algorithm is serving.
The name change could also help clear up potential confusion within the app. Over a decade and a half ago, when the News Feed was introduced, Facebook didnât also have a News tab that users could mix it up with. In a memo to employees, Meta said the âNews Feedâ name made people think it was a place for news stories instead of posts from friends.