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Facebook Remove the Trending
Facebook remove the Trending: section of its site, which usually appears to the right of the news feed, displaying a list of topics. Most popular news at any given time.
“We will soon remove Trends to accommodate future Facebook news experiences,” wrote Facebook News Product Manager Alex Hardiman in an official statement. “From search, We have found that over time people see the product less and less valuable. ”
Trends was first launched in 2014 “to help people discover hot topics that were popular in the Facebook community,” Hardiman wrote. But will now be phased out as Facebook introduces more news-related products.
However, many doubt that there are other reasons to Facebook remove Trending. To dig deeper, I asked my team the question: “What is it really about?”
Why is Facebook Really Remove the Trending?
1. Negative stories about Facebook Frequently Appear in Trends
- According to the official deion of Facebook, the trend groups the most popular news among Facebook users “number of editors who publish articles on Facebook on this topic and the level of participation of these articles.”
- But Facebook receives a high degree of review and related media coverage over the past year, with a series of public relations nightmares ranging from its role in ‘ election interference to the misuse of personal data by the brewing company.
- Of Cambridge Analytica voter profiles. These stories typically rank first on the site’s trending list.
- When the news broke, the trends would phase out; for example, they were also discovered by many to take first place in the trend rankings.
- “It seems to me that it could also be a strategic decision on the part of the brand to know how much of the new ‘trends of the last few months have been the subject of Cambridge Analytica controversy,” says Annabelle Nyst, content strategist.
- “If they commit to the transparency, they cannot remove that content from the “Trends” section, but they can remove the “area itself.
2. Facebook is Under Fire for Fake News on Trends
- As Facebook itself said, Trending groups news topics based on what users share the most on Facebook. However, much of what most commonly share consists of fake content.
- For example, a “live broadcast” of the cast of the supermoon in February of this year.
- It will be a continuous broadcast of a still image [stolen] with sound effects playing, which has received at least 16 million views.
- Facebook has announced several features and efforts to curb the spread of such fake content.
- Since it first revealed that foreign actors were setting the site up to spread disinformation and primarily influence the 2016 US presidential election. Through advertising content.
- However, despite Facebook’s claims, our team is responsible for reviewing trending topics to make sure they reflect real-world events.
- “Often, the less-real news content sometimes slipped through the cracks and continued to make its way into the Trends section.
- The company created several efforts to address this issue before announcing the section’s removal, including only classification topics. Various news editors covered it.
- “The idea was that the single dot cover is not for sale,” wrote The Guardian’s Press Association, “could be a sign that the news is false.”
- The removal of Trends is just the latest in a series of steps Facebook has taken to curb the spread of fake content.
- The efforts of which expect to intensify over the months.
- Before the 2018 US midterm elections.
- In January, the company proclaimed that it would modify the newsfeed algorithm to prioritize content from a user’s friends. And family and said in April that it would apply more.
- “I think this is consistent with previous Facebook announcements that this focused more on local news versus global media.
3. Genuine news Editors n ‘have not Benefited from Trends
- Trends Hardiman wrote in his statement, “It was only available in five countries and accounted for less than 1.5% of clicks in news publishers on average.”
- Genuine news media part of the reason Facebook remove the section.
- Given Facebook’s other recent effort to prioritize the most authentic content, sometimes through personalization. And localization, from various news sources, Henry Franco, editor of social media, says the reasoning seems legitimate.
- “It’s a low-traffic route, and with the platform geared towards videos and mobile devices. There aren’t many reasons to keep it,” he says, pointing mainly to the Trending office. -experience in nature.
- “It seems like Facebook always prioritizes local and breaking news, so I’m not sure they measure up to anything.”
- The editors Whether or not genuine news will benefit from this change is another story, a story Franco doesn’t think is entirely likely.
- “But since Facebook has all the control here,” he said, “I don’t think that’s important to them.”
- “We have seen that the way people eat news on Facebook is changing to be primarily mobile. And increasingly through news videos,” he wrote.
- “We are exploring new habits to help people stay on top of the most important news that matters to them while ensuring that what they see on Facebook comes from quality, reliable sources.
- One of those methods, Hardiman says, is to apply a “Breaking News” tag to news items that match that value.
- Facebook is currently testing this feature with 80 publishers in various countries – “North America, South America, Europe, India, and Australia”. It is allowing publishers to apply this tag themselves.
Conclusion
News Features will also include a “Today on” section of the site, where Facebook users can view the latest news from local publishers as a community. If this sounds conversant, it may be due to Google’s recent announcement of similar functionality in its new Google News app.
Given the overall impact of all these factors, Nyst says, time spent on Facebook could be an underlying motivator for this latest move.
