Facebook Is Killing Off Problematic 'Trending' News Section by Next Week
Facebook has just announced that it is planning to phase out "Trending," a section on the upper right part of the platform's desktop site. The module, which was meant to deliver what are supposedly the most discussed and shared news at the moment, had its share of controversies ranging from fake news to allegations of bias.
There are no mentions of those in the announcement by Alex Hardiman, Head of News Products for Facebook, of course. Instead, Facebook says they are killing off the feature due to its unpopularity, according to their news post on Friday, June 1.
Trending was introduced back in 2014, and four years later, Facebook chose to make it available in just five countries, according to Hardiman. On top of the very limited roll-out, Facebook also said that Trending only contributed less than 1.5 percent of clicks to news publishers on average, despite its prominent place on the social media website.
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Facebook Trending will be out of Facebook by next week, along with other Facebook products and the third-party integration services such as the Trends API, meaning third-party apps and tools will no longer be able to connect to it.
Even back in 2014, Trending was already the subject of much controversy starting from the time The Washington Post discovered that the feature, which reached 167 million users in the U.S. alone, would repeatedly feature fake news and misleading reports.
At various points, Facebook Trending ran headlines for demonstrably fake news like "BREAKING: Fox News Exposes Traitor Megyn Kelly, Kicks Her Out for Backing Hillary," as well as a story about how the Sept. 11 attacks were a "controlled demolition."
Satirical stories, even from sites that were clearly known for their tongue-in-cheek pieces, somehow made it to the Facebook's Trending section as well. Even worse, allegations surfaced that Facebook workers were routinely made to suppress news stories, particularly those aimed at conservative readers, as reported by Gizmodo.
"Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending," a former curator for Facebook reportedly said. In 2016, Facebook announced changes to Trending such that rather than people writing descriptions of the stories, excerpts were automatically generated instead. Curators are then hired to select items according to daily trends.
Facebook is not planning to give up on breaking news, though, and the company is now looking at three new categories that "help people stay informed about timely, breaking news that matters to them, while making sure the news they see on Facebook is from trustworthy and quality sources," according to Facebook's announcement.
The platform is now planning to add "Breaking News" posts on the News Feed of users, as well as a dedicated section called "Today In." News in video form will also have its own section on Facebook Watch as well.
