Recently, Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced that the social network site's content-recommendation algorithm will be altered. According to Facebook, this news-feed alteration will emphasize local news as the company hopes to deliver more meaningful content to users.

Facebook commented on the new changes, "Today, we're updating News Feed to also prioritize local news so that you can see topics that have a direct impact on you and your community and discover what's happening in your local area. This change is taking effect in the U.S., and we plan to expand to more countries this year." The company further stated that it is also "testing a dedicated section on Facebook that connects people to news and information in their community, called Today In." They are testing this in six U.S. cities and plan to expand Today In's reach in the coming months. In addition to prioritizing local news, the company said it would also emphasize posts from friends as well as "high-quality news sources."

The fake-news debate, however, is not the only flag that has prompted Facebook to take a long, hard look at its content. According to The Adage Website, "Zuckerberg said that people are devoting 50 million fewer hours a day to the social network, which comes out to two minutes per person on average. Facebook has 1.4 billion daily users." The company claims that the substantial decline in the amount of time users invest into the social network is a result of political-bred irritation. According to the same article, an executive (who chose to remain anonymous) representing an advertising agency stated that, "People are exhausted by the nonstop political dialog, the arguments. That is a lot of it." Equipped with this information, the question can be raised as to whether or not the network's algorithm is really just a tool kit for helping repair Facebook's decline in user interaction or if the algorithm is truly being re-structured to shed light upon local news.

Speculation surrounding the social network's algorithm has prompted Zuckerberg to counter such rumors. "There's this myth that we design News Feed in order to just optimize for time spent or likes or comments or some signals like that." He then went on to say that Facebook's content is a direct reflection of the voice of its users, which the company captures via surveys.

Another question to address is how businesses will react to Facebook's alterations. While it may seem that cutting out a plethora of information pieces will hurt rather than help ad revenue, executives at the social media network say otherwise. With this new change, users may potentially invest more of their time engaging with meaningful content while also encountering ads. Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, stated that, "We have more opportunities for monetization." However, she also noted the fact that the company is "not doing this to be positive or negative on revenue."

Facebook's steps to to alter its content-recommendation algorithm will undoubtedly decrease the mass of faulty facts that can potentially swarm its feeds. It will work to provide users with local information that is both more pertinent and meaningful. Nevertheless, the only way to test Facebook's promises is to see how the changes will play out in the coming weeks.