Facebook Inc. has made some major changes to its news feed, changes that have left publishers in select countries less than happy with the results.

The trial, which so far has been tested in Slovakia, Sri Lanka, Serbia, Bolivia, Guatemala and Cambodia, saw nonpromoted posts by publishers moved out of the news feed and into its “explore feed.” Some news publishers in those countries have reported four times fewer interactions. Posts from friends and ads were not affected, leading some media to call the move a “pay to play” initiative.

“Pages are seeing dramatic drops in organic reach,” Slovakian journalist Filip Struhárik wrote in a post on Medium. “Reach of several asked Facebook pages fell on Thursday and Friday by two-thirds compared to previous days.”

The main criticism is that such an initiative, if it should go global, would hurt smaller publishers the most as more well-known news outlets have regular readers and don’t always rely on Facebook to reach them. In a blog post, Facebook downplayed the test, stating that at the moment it had no plans to roll it out to other countries.

“The goal of this test is to understand if people prefer to have separate places for personal and public content,” said Adam Mosseri, head of news feed. “We will hear what people say about the experience to understand if it’s an idea worth pursuing any further.”

Another criticism is that explore feed is not only another step users have to take to find content they have followed, but it also contains content Facebook thinks you will like based on your behavior — making it even more difficult to find the news outlets you follow. Others have said that if Facebook becomes less dedicated to news and more personal – plus the ads, of course – it could be a positive thing.

Again, Facebook finds itself in a difficult position. Such a move could relegate what’s become known as fake news to a less harmful place, as users do not generally stray from their news feed and fake news distributors may not have the means to pay for promoted content. On the other hand, smaller or alternative, reasoned media could suffer. It’s anyone’s guess how successful Facebook will deem the test.

Image: the digital artist visa Pixabay