In 2004, Facebook took the world by storm with its new & revolutionary concept of staying connected with people. It was a substantial growth and change, which flipped the social media coin into a big success. Then came a flood of new additions including Reactions, Live, 360 Videos and many more. It is not only the most preferred way to stay connected with your friends and loved ones, but also a way to know what is trending worldwide. But, little did people know that the channel can also become a source of Fake news or latest controversy that surfaced around its Trending News Feature.
Whether it was U.S. Presidential elections or the news of Demonetization; our Facebook walls were flooded with news and blogs, which stirred up some wrong information among the people. The company also fired its employees from the Trending Team, which left Artificial Intelligence and Technical Staff to deliver stories to the site’s users. And not only that there were many stories that surfaced around this topic targeting Facebook. Let’s have a look at all the conversations around the Trending/ Fake news.
Understanding the subject
The Trending feature, which appears on the right side of the News Feed now strips away the context written by Facebook’s journalists and only display simple terms which are buzzing on the social network. On Facebook, users see the content that they like or agree with in their news feed. On the other hand, Fake news is when some news on the internet were misleading, sloppily reported or in some cases totally made up.
According to reports it is suggested that at least five Fake stories were promoted by Facebook’s Trending Algorithm during a recent three-week period.
Future Steps taken for this problem
As per the recent reports, Facebook now has a “review team” working on Trending, but their new guideline requires them to exercise less editorial oversight than the previous team. And the reviewers are required to check whether the headline of an article being promoted within a trend is hoax or contains demonstrably false information.
In the recent accounts of Trending/Fake news on Facebook, it would be wise to check if the news appearing on the social channel is true or not by checking the facts mentioned in the post. So, it’s not just about personal connections on the Facebook, there is a lot more happening in the social media world.
