Facebook users who love to check what’s in the news using its “Trending” news box will now have to look for some other source for what’s hot and spreading like a wild fire! Yes, you read it right. Facebook is all set to remove its Trending news section from user profile pages. If you haven’t used it ever ( which is not really possible though) and have no idea where to find it, look at the right hand side, it sits on the top side of your desktop News Feed area.
The social media giant took this decision after coming across tons of criticism from across the world for years. Of course, this year was a real tough time for the company and it had to undergo a lot of criticism. It did every single thing it could to retain the trust of its users and this latest decision seems to be a part of its struggle for gaining reliability of the masses. It has always been criticised for how and why it picked up any of the stories in the Trending section. With its removal, the company will hopefully overcome some of its controversies. You’ll no more find the ‘Trending’ box on the right hand top side of your Facebook page from the coming week.
Notably, Facebook mentioned that it didn’t really create any wrong idea among the masses as it was active only in five countries and could see only “less than 1.5% of clicks to news publishers on average.” However, the company wouldn’t really stop supplying the latest hot news to the users completely. Currently, it is testing other methods for delivering current hot news to the users. These include breaking news labels as well as a special section for collecting local stories.
Some users may support the “Trending” section and find nothing wrong with it. You may be wondering why and how exactly all the controversy with this news delivery service really started? It actually came under criticism after a report published by Gizmodo in 2016.
The report suggested that some of the former Facebook editors who had the authority to curate headlines had claimed that they made special efforts to keep the conservative stories “routinely suppressed.” And just after the news the social media platform was found more indulged in conservative propaganda. Though after all these controversies, Facebook fired its editorial team and made several many changes to make people trust its news services and distribution.
Interestingly, ‘Trending’ box has even been criticized for being not up to the mark with the latest trends and being rather late in providing any information. It has always faced comparisons with Twitter in which Twitter always won!
But if Facebook spokespersons have to be believed, they are simply removing there “trending” section as they find it to be an old school method of delivering news. They are now all set to launch a newer service for delivering new in the coming future.
