Facebook begins testing Facebook News with a subset of people in the US across four categories of select publishers: general, topical, diverse, and local news

Testing a dedicated place for news in the US — Journalism plays a critical role in our democracy.

Facebook 2019-10-25

Context & Ripple Effects

Facebook's Today In test in six US cities in early 2018 gave the company a working template for dedicated news surfaces — human curation combined with AI to surface reporting alongside events and announcements. By late 2018 that experiment had scaled to 400 cities, proving the format could operate well beyond a handful of metros.

Facebook News extends that playbook from local to national: a dedicated tab shown first to a subset of US users, drawing from a hand-selected publisher pool sorted into four categories — general, topical, diverse, and local. The category structure signals that access will be curated rather than open, making this a gatekeeping decision as much as a product launch.

First-order effects

Publishers selected across the general, topical, diverse, and local categories gain a new high-visibility distribution surface inside the app; publishers outside the pool have no path into it during the test.

Second-order effects

Excluded outlets face pressure to qualify under one of the four named categories to earn inclusion as the test widens, shifting negotiating leverage over news placement from publishers to Facebook's curation team.

Third-order effects

If the pattern holds through a full US launch, platform news distribution consolidates around curated tabs that formally separate journalism from the algorithmic feed — turning Facebook's category definitions into de facto industry standards for what counts as general, topical, diverse, or local news.

The trend: Social platforms are pulling news out of the algorithmic feed and into curated, dedicated surfaces where editorial selection — not engagement ranking — decides which publishers get reach.

Discussion

@juddlegum Judd Legum on x
Facebook's new section of “trusted” news sources will include Breitbart, a website that featured a section on “black crime” and laundered white nationalist talking points https://www.bloomberg.com/...
@pkafka Peter Kafka on x
One between the lines note: Regular Facebook newsfeed is Trump Trump and more Trump. New Facebook News, not so much. https://twitter.com/...
@pkafka Peter Kafka on x
“We want to set a different standard here, that's not a mix of news that your friends and family want to share.” https://twitter.com/...
@edmundlee Edmund Lee on x
Facebook will pay publishers, including @nytimes What's more notable is this rare mea culpa from Zuckerberg: “We feel acute responsibility because there's obviously an awareness that the internet has disrupted the news industry business model,” https://www.nytimes.com/...
@notdetails Joeltergeist on x
siri, show me the most tone deaf thing https://twitter.com/...
@gerryfsmith Gerry Smith on x
Facebook is finally giving some publishers what they want: $$. But how many people will really visit a separate tab to get news? Story w/ @sarahfrier https://www.bloomberg.com/...
@parkermolloy Parker Molloy on x
Breitbart is included in this list of “trusted” publishers. It's a site that absolutely does not adhere to the guidelines, and yet https://www.bloomberg.com/... pic.twitter.com/SdE3H9zrCI
@mathewi Mathew Ingram on x
Facebook is clearly trying to help the media by giving them lots of untruthful political ads to write about. Thanks Mark! https://twitter.com/...
@bgrueskin Bill Grueskin on x
Facebook often says it shouldn't be treated like a publisher. With this deal, Facebook will be paying for news, curating news, making editorial judgments around news and ... publishing news. https://www.wsj.com/...
@asmith83 Adam Smith on x
Congrats to Daily Wire and Diamond and Silk! https://twitter.com/...
@caseynewton Casey Newton on x
Facebook News is here. But will an audience show up for it? https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@markscott82 Mark Scott on x
Still not a media organization. Nope, not one bit. Who would think of such a thing?! https://newsroom.fb.com/...
@mattnavarra Matt Navarra on x
I concur with @CaseyNewton's assessment here about the potential of Facebook's News tab https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@cjamcmahon Ciarn Mc Mahon on x
This comes less than a fortnight after an Oireachtas committee heard several social media corps deny that they were publishers with editorial control https://twitter.com/...
@ceciliakang Cecilia Kang on x
“We feel acute responsibility because there's obviously an awareness that the internet has disrupted the news industry business model,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, said in an interview. https://www.nytimes.com/... via @mikeisaac @marctracey
@zachleat Zach Leatherman on x
For the third time in my thirteen year Twitter existance, I will post a link to TechCrunch (this article is *good*): “Meet users where they are, but pull them back to where you live.” https://techcrunch.com/... on the inevitable future calamity that will be Facebook News.
@aaronnagler Aaron Nagler on x
Why would ANY kind of publisher trust FB ever again? Smh https://twitter.com/...
@mattnavarra Matt Navarra on x
A timely reminder why news publishers should think twice about jumping back into bed with fickle Facebook https://techcrunch.com/...
Vox Peter Kafka on x
Facebook has finally decided that the best way to deliver news is to act like a newspaper
@pkafka Peter Kafka on x
Rupert Murdoch wanted Mark Zuckerberg to pay him for news stories — and now Facebook is going to do just that https://www.vox.com/...
@hypervisible @hypervisible on x
“If you click on a Wall Street Journal article via Facebook's news section, you'll be able to read that one story, but if you click on a subsequent WSJ piece, you'll be asked to pay up.” https://www.vox.com/...
@slpng_giants @slpng_giants on x
Will @facebook pay for the “Diversity is not our strength” and the “Immigrants make our country poorer and dirtier” op-eds, too? https://twitter.com/...
@jason_kint Jason Kint on x
🤗 “Facebook is expected to generate $19 billion in profits this year. Call me biased, but spending a small fraction of that to please publishers seems like a decent investment.” - @pkafka https://twitter.com/...
@reckless Nilay Patel on x
If Facebook had just built a revenue model for news and paid publishers from the start instead of blithely destroying thousands of jobs, it probably would be a lot more popular right now https://www.vox.com/...
@pkafka Peter Kafka on x
Thing you don't expect to hear from someone who doesn't work for Rupe: “We should all be sending Robert Thomson and Rupert Murdoch thank you notes.” https://twitter.com/...
@balajis Balaji S. Srinivasan on x
Here's the full transcript of the six hour #Zuckerberg hearing on Libra. https://www.c-span.org/...

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