14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook has decided to roll out some important changes to the “Trending Topics” section in the United States, which will push everyone to see the same news stories, rather than the customized version currently in place. This should help keep up to speed with what’s happening now, but also to fight against the fake news that has spread like wildfire during the election season.
Facebook will now use its own automated system to pick which articles to show on your profile based on what the media is covering, but also the stories that are going viral among users, creating conversations, getting shared, and so on. By picking out a list of trusted sources to choose from, Facebook would help users avoid fake news sites.
The biggest issue people seem to have with this particular news is that their personal preferences won’t be taken into consideration anymore, which is a huge step for the social network. Up until now, they have pretty much relied entirely on personalizing every feed for every user on the social network. This new method, however, may do more good than bad in the end, which explains why Facebook is willing to take the risk.
The biggest news source
Facebook seems to have finally come to terms with the fact that the social network is one of the main sources of news for most of the massive audience and it’s taking this role seriously. That’s not to say that people won’t continue to see fake news shared by their friends, but in this particular corner of the page, information will be filtered to those trusted websites.
Another advantage, aside from avoiding lies disguised as news, is the fact that breaking news will be quicker to surface on everyone’s pages in this way. The version that has been in place so far has not been too good at sharing real-time news.
The changes take effect on Wednesday for US users. People’s News Feeds will remain unchanged.
“Trending uses a variety of signals from News Feed, including when people report news as fake or spam, to help prevent fake news, hoaxes or spam from appearing in Trending. Today’s update may also help prevent hoaxes and fake news from appearing in Trending because the updated system identifies groups of articles shared on Facebook instead of relying solely on mentions of a topic,” Facebook’s VP for Product Management Will Cathcart writes in the announcement.