Facebook drops trending tab in ‘fake news’ war
FACEBOOK is to remove the “trending stories” section of its news feed, a feature that proved controversial in the spread of “fake news”.
The section promoted popular articles and topics and was displayed prominently on Facebook’s website and mobile app.
Facebook said: “Over time people found the product to be less and less useful.” It attracted fewer than three clicks in 300, it said.
In 2016, a report alleged that Facebook employees regularly suppressed conservative-leaning items from the trending section. The company employed a team to manually update the section and several former curators claimed they were discouraged from featuring such news stories.
That led to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, having to assure prominent conservatives in the US of the company’s neutrality.
The fallout following the report led to a series of tweaks to the trending section.
In 2016, Facebook replaced its practice of human curation with an algorithm designed to detect popular news topics. However, hours after the algorithm came into effect, the trending section began featuring inaccurate and potentially offensive articles.
Last year, Facebook again adjusted the trending feature, changing its focus so it promoted topics covered by news organisations, rather than topics that appeared to be popular among Facebook users.
Alex Hardiman, Facebook’s head of news products, said: “We’ve seen that the way people consume news on Facebook is changing to be primarily on mobile and increasingly through news video. So we’re exploring new ways to help people stay informed about timely, breaking news that matters to them.”
Facebook said it was adding more tools to help people who were breaking news stories. Including a “Today In” feature, to show its users local news.
The decision to remove trending stories comes after Facebook made changes to its news feed so people would see fewer news stories and more articles from local sources.
The company had come under pressure from politicians to combat the spread of “fake news” on Facebook.