Facebook tries slipping more local politics into your News Feed
Facebook isn’t shy about wanting to increase your involvement in politics, and that might soon include seeing posts from the politicians you don’t follow. A spokesperson has confirmed to Recode that the social network is testing a feature that slips the “top posts” from local politicians into your News Feed, even when you don’t follow them. You’ll only see it once a week at the most, and only if you already follow at least one of your area’s representatives (at any level), but it will lead to seeing political messages that you might have otherwise missed. And yes, that includes from other parties — you may see what’s popular on the other side of the fence.
There’s no certainty that this feature will become widely available, but it’s easy to see Facebook rolling this out quickly. The company is determined to not only boost involvement in politics, but to prevent a repeat of the 2016 US presidential election. Critics accused Facebook of skewing the election results by letting social media bubbles (and the fake news that circulates among them) persist. If it can regularly show what your local politicians are up to, it might pop those bubbles and encourage you to vote when issues you care about are at stake.
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