In a tweet on February 15, 2022, Meta-owned Facebook announced that its ‘News Feed’ will henceforth be known as only “Feed”. The News Feed is the main window on Facebook that updates users of information regarding their friends, groups and pages relating to profile picture changes, upcoming events, birthdays, and so on. It was introduced more than 15 years ago.
https://twitter.com/facebookapp/status/1493633545444675589?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The company, after more than 15 years, decided to rename its central feature in what is being perceived as an attempt by the company to allegedly change the perception of Facebook as a hub of misinformation. Facebook recently revealed its desire to operate as a news aggregator, and just one day earlier, announced the launch of Facebook News in France.
Renaming the news feed may therefore also be perceived to be a bid to distinguish between news, and posts such as updates from friends, groups, pages etc.
However, Facebook spokesperson Dami Oyefeso denied the same in an interview with TechCrunch Magazine. He stated that the new name was meant to better reflect the diverse content that people see on their news feed and that it is in no way related to the launch of the News Tab in France, and a number of other international markets prior to it.
Furthermore, the company also insists that there is no larger motive at play here, in light of the fact that the move is also being perceived as an attempt by Meta to shift the perception of its core products from the social media website to its Metaverse, an online virtual environment which helps project online social experiences out into the real world.