Facebook is going to start showing you pieces people actually read

Another algorithm change has been announced by the social network, focused on enhancing reading time

Will you ever click away? Not if Facebook succeeds

Facebook is changing its algorithm yet again, and this time it wants to show you more things that you’ll actually spend time reading or watching.

The social network looks at a wealth of data when deciding which posts you actually see on News Feed, but until now it hasn’t cared too much about what you actually do when you click away from Facebook. It says that’s going to change.

“We’re learning that the time people choose to spend reading or watching content they clicked on from News Feed is an important signal that the story was interesting to them,” said software engineer Moshe Blank and research scientist Jie Xu in a post on the company’s website.

As a result, the site will now attempt to pick links which have a higher reading time. But don’t think that you’ll have a News Feed filled with 30,000 word New Yorker epics. “We will also be looking at the time spent within a threshold,” the pair said, “so as not to accidentally treat longer articles preferentially.”

Published By - Theguardian.com - Sports New, LifeStyle News, Politics news, UK and world political comment and analysis: Friday 22 April 2016 11.50 BST

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