Today, Facebook announced that it will soon begin prioritizing local news on users’ News Feed, a move that stands in stark contrast with the company’s January 12 announcement that it would be deprioritizing all news in the News Feed in an attempt to correct its reputation as a easy-to-manipulate fake news hotspot.

Sure, local newspapers aren’t exactly doing great, and as a concept, funneling more traffic their way sounds like a stellar idea, but the reality is not nearly as rosy.

It seems unlikely that Facebook — the platform so terrible at content moderation that it’s being forced to reckon with its impact on democracy — will actually be able to determine what a real local news publisher is. The company says it identifies "local publishers as those whose links are clicked on by readers in a tight geographic area,” and that “[i]f a story is from a publisher in your area, and you either follow the publisher’s Page or your friend shares a story from that outlet, it might show up higher in News Feed.”

So basically, all you have to do to count as a “prioritized” local publisher is have a lot of readers in a tight geographic area. That doesn’t exactly seem like an ironclad, manipulation-proof system. If anything, it seems easier to manipulate than Facebook’s previous ranking system, which prioritized likes and audience engagement.

“There are no constraints on which publishers are eligible,” the company writes in a post on the coming update, “which means large local publishers will benefit, as well as publishers that focus on niche topics like local sports, arts and human-interest stories. That said, small news outlets may benefit from this change more than other outlets, because they tend to have a concentrated readership in one location.”

If Facebook really wants to stay out of the news business, why doesn’t it just stay out of the news business? No partial exits, or selective prioritization, just a clean break. Is it really that hard just to let go?