Facebook Inc. has made yet another change to what you see in your news feed, this time predicting what you want to read after ascertaining how much time you spend reading certain types of stories. The update is part of the ‘Feed Quality Program’.

One of the reasons for this, says Facebook, is that many users spend very little time reading a story after clicking on it, something that often happens with articles that might be said to be clickbait. In a blog post Facebook wrote, “With this change, we can better understand which articles might be interesting to you based on how long you and others read them, so you’ll be more likely to see stories you’re interested in reading.”

Facebook says the changes, which include preventing seeing too many posts from the same publisher, will roll out in the coming weeks. Don’t expect a drastic change, says the social media giant.

This comes after a February update to the news feed in which Facebook examined feedback from users to determine what appears at the top of the feed. Facebook said it would, “Begin to look at both the probability that you would want to see the story at the top of your feed and the probability that you will like, comment on, click or share a story.” From this certain stories would be ranked higher than others.

One of the criticisms in having your news feed tailor made is a lack of diversity in what you read. A problem that some critics have discussed apropos social media and bespoke news is the fact we might be spending more time reinforcing our beliefs than opening up to new ideas. This has been called, ‘Reinforcement Theory’.

If, for instance, you spend little time reading a stories that don’t align with your political standpoint – but you clicked on the article out of curiosity – those types of stories might stop appearing in your news feed.

While this move by Facebook could improve what the user might consider seeing quality content, one factor to think about is that a user’s go-to news source might be telling only the stories one wants to hear.

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