Facebook Inc. has more changes in store for news feed as part of its ongoing efforts to make Facebook less terrible for mental health.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg announced earlier this month that Facebook will rank user posts higher than posts shared by businesses, and today he said that the social network will also prioritize local news sources over national and international outlets.

“People consistently tell us they want to see more local news on Facebook,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Facebook. “Local news helps us understand the issues that matter in our communities and affect our lives. Research suggests that reading local news is directly correlated with civic engagement. People who know what’s happening around them are more likely to get involved and help make a difference.”

Facebook explained in a statement that it identifies local news sources as outlets who get nearly all of their traffic from “readers in a tight geographic area,” which means the news feed will not prioritize local stories published by national or global outlets. This could have the side effect of burying outside opinions on local events, but that may be exactly what the social network intends.

“When I traveled around the country last year, one theme people kept telling me is how much we all have in common if we can get past some of the most divisive national issues,” Zuckerberg said in his post. “Many people told me they thought that if we could turn down the temperature on the more divisive issues and instead focus on concrete local issues, then we’d all make more progress together.”

The update to the news feed is rolling out only to the U.S. for now, but Facebook said it will expand the changes to other countries later this year. Facebook noted that large publishers are still eligible to be consider local sources as long as they meet the regional traffic requirements. However, the company said small publishers will likely benefit the most from the change, as it will help them compete against large nonlocal publishers.

Some small publishers may have been left out of today’s update, Facebook said, but it plans to refine its algorithms over time to include as many local sources as possible. The company also added that “all of our work to reduce false news, misinformation, clickbait, sensationalism and inauthentic accounts still applies.”

Photo: Facebook