Facebook updates trending feature in fight against fake news

Facebook is making significant changes to the way it handles “trending news” as part of a concerted effort to remove “fake news” from the social network. Instead of focusing on individual items that have drawn a large crowd of user generated comments or shares, Facebook will cover items that have been reported by a range of publishers, where information can be verified.

Will Cathcart, Facebook’s vice president of product management, told journalists that this move will make the social network a more credible source of information and “reflect real world events being covered by multiple outlets.”

Facebook is also changing the way it creates trending news lists based on individual users’ preferences.

Users of the social network will now see the same topics as other users based on the country where they live. It is hoped that this move will change the scope of what Facebook users see and read, presenting alternative views and widening their sphere of influence. In the past Facebook has been accused of allowing their users to live in a “filter bubble” where they are only exposed to news and opinion which they agree with.

Facebook has struggled to create a balanced view of the news on its site. Human editors were replaced by algorithms after reports suggested that they were suppressing conservative viewpoints.

The algorithmic approach was designed to reduce any political bias on the site but failed to successful filter out bogus news.

It has been suggested that fake news items carried by Facebook’s trending news service had a significant impact on the recent US Presidential elections. This had previously been dismissed by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as “crazy”.

In other moves to guarantee the quality of news distributed via the Facebook platform, the social media giant has also committed to removing publishers of fake news from its lucrative advertising network.