The social media giant Facebook has finally decided to discontinue its Trending News feature. This feature has been in a lot of controversies recently due to spread the fake news through it. This feature was introduced in 2014. The aim behind the introduction of this feature was to help people discover popular news topics. The feature allows users to discover news topics that were popular across the community. However soon the social media giant starts facing allegations of political bias because of this feature.
According to a statement by Alex Hardiman, Facebook’s Head of News Products. “The company is removing Trending from Facebook by next week”. According to him, all the products and third-party integrations that rely on the Trends API will also be removed.
Whats next for News feature of Facebook:
Alex Hardiman also confirms that they are exploring new ways to help people inform about latest news timely. He also confirms that they are trying to make sure that whatever user see on Facebook is from quality and trustworthy sources. The Trending News feature was not less than a headache for the company. In 2016 US polls some reports suggest that the trending team was suppressing conservative news on Facebook. This led to Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to fire the editors of the trending team.
The company continued to modify the trending section to make it more helpful for users. But Facebook also confirms that over time this feature has become less useful to users. Currently, Facebook is running tests in several countries that also includes India to let publishers put a breaking news indicator on their posts in News Feed. Apart from this, the company is also testing a dedicated section called Today In. This section will connect people to latest breaking and important through local publishers in their city. This will also include updates from local offices and organizations.