【maternal eroticism】

Facebook is maternal eroticismdead set on breaking through our news biases and popping our filter bubbles. Now, in a new attempt to expand our horizons, the company is taking a page out of Twitter's playbook by rolling out a new feature that'll show you posts from strangers.

SEE ALSO: What Facebook must do to prepare its 3,000 new moderators for the trauma they'll face

The new feature is called "Latest Conversations" and was spotted by Tech Crunch. After searching a news topic, Facebook will now display public user generated posts from users outside your own personal network, along with a live ticker estimating the number of people engaging with the topic.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The "Latest Conversations" tab shows up beneath the Photos and News sections when you search for something on Facebook. It's a nice touch to watch the number of people in the conversation rise and fall — if you sit long enough, you might conceivably watch a trend rise and fall before your eyes.

That said, the posts might not necessarily give you a deeper understanding of the topic at hand. My experience using the feature was filled with results rife with misspellings, profanity, and languages I couldn't read. But at the very least, the new feature does help contextualize the scope of the conversation taking place around a topic.

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Not every topic is given the "Latest Conversations" treatment, though — and the attention might only last as long as a trend is hot. For instance, the term Lonzo Ball in the search above was popping when I first found the feature. But when I checked back about 20 minutes later, the conversation counter had closed. It's unclear what qualifies a search topic for "Latest Conversations," or if they're manually selected or generated by an algorithm.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed that the new feature is more than just one of the many A/B tests that crop up from time to time on the network.

"We're rolling out a new section in search results that will show the most recent public posts about timely topics that a lot of people are discussing on Facebook," they told us via email, with no other comment.

The social network also confirmed that it's testing out a new "Topics to Follow" feature for the News Feed in an attempt to broaden perspectives on less pressing matters, potentially taking the focus away from moderator-managed Pages.

[h/t Tech Crunch]

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