News and Current Affairs
News and Current Affairs is a feature in testing: it may not be available to all users yet, and it may change, even a lot, over time.
What it is
News stories are content published only by registered news outlets. They can be geotagged on the map and aren't censored by the platform, in favour of free information that takes no sides.
Ranking and similar news
The same news can be shared on the platform by different sources. The ranking doesn't group them together: it gives each article a score built on four signals:
- relevance to the user's interests, language and area;
- the news outlet's authority on that specific topic, not in general;
- freshness, which drops faster for breaking news and more slowly for in-depth pieces and culture;
- originality, which rewards whoever published first and penalises near-identical copies.
After sorting, content that is too similar to what's already shown higher up is penalised, and the number of articles from the same source in the top positions is limited. This way several voices on the same story can appear, but ordered by quality and spaced out from each other.
There are no paid services to push news stories up or promote them. The algorithm, supervised by the staff, assesses the timeliness, quality and quantity of the information, and how much users appreciate the news story and the news outlet.
Who can publish it
Publishing news is reserved for verified, properly registered news outlets and recognised news portals. Any news outlet can ask to join Nearby Community by writing to the Verification Team at [email protected].
Publishing news
- From the Workspace, one story at a time: see the Workspace guide.
- Automatically from the news outlet's website, with the News API.
Guidelines
News must be real, checked and verifiable, and it is the responsibility of the news outlet that publishes it. The following are not accepted:
- gossip;
- promotional news;
- reposts and news that isn't original.
- 📱 Web mobile
- 💻 Web desktop
- 📲 App
News is read in the app: when you open the link to a news story from the browser, you see an invitation to open it in the app (see A news item).
News is read in the app: when you open the link to a news story from the browser, you see an invitation to open it in the app (see A news item).
The guide of the app is on its way
We are preparing the pages about the Nearby Community app for iPhone and Android, with its screens. In the meantime you can download it for free from the stores.