Trending topics are essentially, trending topics. For Facebook, the feature that is indeed useful to know what people are talking about, has been criticized more than many since its first inception.
Facebook has been criticized for how it was delivering them. The innocuous-seeming little sidebar module is regarded as the epicenter of controversy over bias and fake news.
With a reboot on January 25, 2017, Facebook wants to stop that. The company settles on a more traditional list of popular events, not anymore putting those efforts in personalizing it to users or others.
But similar to before, Trending Topics are still selected by algorithms, to then be reviewed by Facebook's team. But with the update, Facebook is hoping that it's moving to the right direction for a more balanced Trending Topics by killing more fake news along the way.
So only topics that have been covered by a significant number of credible publishers are to be surfaced.
The Trending Topics reboot include three updates. They include:
- Featuring a publisher headline below each topic name.
- Improving its system to determine what is trending.
- Giving everyone in the same region to see the same topics.
Breaking them down, the first is the most notable. Back in August 2016, the company has updated Trending Topics, and one of them was removing descriptions about topics. This way, Facebook can prevent apparent bias on how events were described.
Facebook in adding publisher's headline instead of adding extra details can improve engagement, but also keeping Facebook out of whatever events are described inside the Trending Topics section. As for which headline the company chooses, Facebook said that it "is automatically selected based on a combination of factors including the engagement around the article on Facebook, the engagement around the publisher overall, and whether other articles are linking to it."
For small publishers, this can be their advantage to compete with bigger and larger publishers.
The second change is about how Facebook determines its Trending Topics from a wider pool of sources. Previously, Facebook might have identified a topic as "trending" based on a single, popular article or post. With the update, Facebook designates a topic as "trending" by seeing how many publishers are posting stories on the same topic, as well as how many people are liking, sharing, and commenting on those articles.
This method should be able to put trending topics up higher much quicker. By making it more effective in capturing a broader range of news and events, it can also help ensure that the trending topics really reflect the real world events.
So less hoax and fake news better by leveraging real events higher.
As for the third, Facebook is making sure that everyone in a region sees the same trending topics. This way, it will be easier for the company to manage topics, and to roll out the trends to its users around the world. Facebook also won't be required to alter and calibrate its algorithms in a way to know each user's interest.
This also enables the company to fight fake news better. With everyone in a region seeing the same selection of trending stories, Facebook can manage people in a region to discuss the same events.
Further reading: Google And Facebook In Fighting Fake News: Not Without Their Own Problems
