Facebook is testing a new feature in its app where it will have city-specific local news, events, and announcements available on its platform. The test is currently live for a new section called ‘Today In‘ in six US cities New Orleans, Little Rock, Billings, Peoria, Olympia, and Binghampton.
Users in test markets will be able to access the feature through the bottom-right menu button on Facebook.
It is a machine Learning system which will empower this new feature to show local news. Local news publishers will be approved by Facebook’s News Partnerships team, which is being headed by NBC news anchor Campbell Brown, the spokesperson added.The move comes as part of Facebook’s Journalism Project announced in January last year to curb the spread of fake news on its platform and build out local news partnerships, the spokesperson said.
