In an attempt to curb fake news and accusations of bias, Facebook has updated Trending Topics that highlights the most popular topics on the social media platform.
According to a blog post in Facebook Newsroom, as posted by Will Cathart, VP, Product Management, three new updates to Trending is being implemented that shows people are currently discussing on Facebook that they might not be seeing in their News Feed:
- Trending topics will now feature a publisher headline below each topic name
- An improved system to determine what is trending
- Everyone in the same region will see the same topics
The new changes, according to the blog, are being rolled out by Facebook and should be available to everyone in the US in the next few weeks.
With the change, Facebook now adds headlines and sources next to the Trending topics. It would now be easy for anyone to discern where the topic is coming from and why the subject is Trending without clicking on the item.
However, according to Engadget, the biggest shift is that Facebook will no longer personalize what stories to show that matches the user's interests. Implementing the third bullet point above, people in the same region will now see the same topics that users would not normally see.
Facebook Trending news will now also depend on how many publishers are posting articles based on the same topic, including how many are liking, sharing, and commenting on said articles. This, in essence, will focus on news pieces being broadly discussed rather than promoting engagement.
Accordingly, the changes are being implemented to improve Trending Topics, which became a hot issue last spring for allegedly suppressing conservative voices and viewpoints. Facebook's effort shows the platform is trying to address hits it got that tarnished its reputation for allegedly been used as a venue for spreading disinformation.
It is early to tell if Facebook's effort will work, seeing the new Trending interface seems reminiscent of Google's aggregated news style. Additional reports also said that Facebook is banishing perpetual publishers of false information from its lucrative ad network to discourage the creation of "fake news."
Meanwhile, Google, who operates an even larger digital ad network, has also taken similar steps to ward of bogus publishers. Google last Wednesday said, they had exiled about 200 publishers from their AdSense network according to The Telegraph.
