Editor’s take: Facebook is formally doing away with its News Feed, and will instead refer to the content stream simply as the Feed. By removing “News” from the name, Meta is essentially distancing itself from the toxicity associated with misinformation and fake news. Sure, it’s just a simple name change, but now the company can say it’s just a Feed that has no direct relation to actual news, implied or otherwise.

When Facebook launched in 2004, it was essentially a directory of profile pages. Users would navigate from page to page to check out what was new on the Walls of their friends. Everything changed in September 2006 with the introduction of the News Feed, which created a centralized stream of content on each user’s homepage populated with updates from friends.

The change shook the community to the core, as suddenly, everything you did on the platform was front and center for all of your friends to see. Facebook rolled out additional privacy options to help control what users were sharing, and eventually, most warmed up to the News Feed.

Over the next several years as Facebook’s user base swelled beyond belief, the News Feed seemingly became less about sharing updates from friends and more about pushing agendas. The spread of misinformation became a huge pain point for Facebook, landing the company in hot water on more than one occasion.

Image credit Joshua Hoehne




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