Facebook 'Trending' fights fake news on desktop & iPhone, displays trusted publisher & summary

In an effort to fight the fake news epidemic, changes to Facebook's Trending section have now rolled out to all users, adding an original, trusted source of the material and brief summary of the story.

The changes, announced at the end of January, are intended to provide more context to what is trending on Facebook, as well as who provided the original information. The headline and source are selected by Facebook based on engagement around the article on Facebook, the engagement around the publisher overall, and whether other articles are linking to it.

As before, selecting the topic sends the user to a page with multiple links to different sources covering the same story.

Facebook claims that the changes should make trending topics be displayed quicker, make the feature more effective at capturing a wide array of news, and also ensure that trending topics reflect real world events being covered by multiple news outlets and aren't some kind of news item intentionally fraudulent and intended to deceive readers — also known as "fake news."

Topics are automatically selected by an algorithm, but are reviewed by a team to ensure they accurately represent real-world events. Legitimate news is sorted by a variety of factors, according to Facebook, including collating when people report news as fake or spam.

The list is also no longer personalized based on interests, with people in the same region seeing the same topics. Initial AppleInsider testing shows that New York City; Washington D.C.; Burlington, Vt.; Fort Myers, Fla.; San Antonio, Tex; and Erie, Penn. are considered the same region for the Trending category display, at least in the early phases of the U.S.-wide rollout.

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On the iPhone app, the Trending stories list is found after hitting the search button.

Fake news about a D.C. restaurant led to a real-life crime.

Apple offers its own News app, and has vowed to do its part to cut down on the spread of misinformation. In an interview last week, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook called fake news "one of today's chief problems," and "not something that has a simple solution."

And earlier this week, Apple's head of internet services Eddy Cue said the company is working on backend solutions to prevent the spread of fake news in the iOS News application.

18 Comments

chasm 11 Years · 3707 comments

About 8 years ago

I think this is generally a good idea. It gives people more reliable points of reference, but doesn't abridge anyone's rights -- you can still get your freshly made-up fake news if that's what you want. For myself, once the election got going I decided to stop reposting anything from sites I've never heard of, or with obviously click-baity headlines, and to stick with mostly news sources that have, you know, won at least one Pulitzer. I also make sure to actually read anything I'm reposting first -- boy did that cut out a lot of stuff I used to post. My last rule was that if it didn't meet the criteria above, **even if I agree with the political view or wanted to believe it was true** -- I didn't post it until one of the trustworthy sources verified it. Thus far this is working out well, and has as a byproduct eliminated most arguments, since anyone rebutting the share must come up with a better source than what I used. :)

redraider11 10 Years · 186 comments

About 8 years ago

chasm said:

I think this is generally a good idea. It gives people more reliable points of reference, but doesn't abridge anyone's rights -- you can still get your freshly made-up fake news if that's what you want. For myself, once the election got going I decided to stop reposting anything from sites I've never heard of, or with obviously click-baity headlines, and to stick with mostly news sources that have, you know, won at least one Pulitzer. I also make sure to actually read anything I'm reposting first -- boy did that cut out a lot of stuff I used to post. My last rule was that if it didn't meet the criteria above, **even if I agree with the political view or wanted to believe it was true** -- I didn't post it until one of the trustworthy sources verified it. Thus far this is working out well, and has as a byproduct eliminated most arguments, since anyone rebutting the share must come up with a better source than what I used. :)

I don't think it's necessary at all. You yourself said you stopped reposting stories from sources you didnt trust, so why do we need Facebook to do this for us? People should be getting their news from multiple sources and generating their own informed opinions. I think it's a dangerous path to start heading down where maybe in the future sources that Facebook doesn't agree with can start getting left out.

Nevertheless it's Facebook's platform and they aren't limited by the First Amendment so they can inevitability do what they want. I guess if enough people requested it then they're just giving the people what they want.

1 Like · 0 Dislikes

Soli 10 Years · 9981 comments

About 8 years ago

I'm glad they moved back to showing you a subtitle for the trending topic. I didn't care for that change to remove it last year.

wonkothesane 13 Years · 1738 comments

About 8 years ago

redraider11 said:

chasm said:

I think this is generally a good idea. It gives people more reliable points of reference, but doesn't abridge anyone's rights -- you can still get your freshly made-up fake news if that's what you want. For myself, once the election got going I decided to stop reposting anything from sites I've never heard of, or with obviously click-baity headlines, and to stick with mostly news sources that have, you know, won at least one Pulitzer. I also make sure to actually read anything I'm reposting first -- boy did that cut out a lot of stuff I used to post. My last rule was that if it didn't meet the criteria above, **even if I agree with the political view or wanted to believe it was true** -- I didn't post it until one of the trustworthy sources verified it. Thus far this is working out well, and has as a byproduct eliminated most arguments, since anyone rebutting the share must come up with a better source than what I used. :)

I don't think it's necessary at all. You yourself said you stopped reposting stories from sources you didnt trust, so why do we need Facebook to do this for us? People should be getting their news from multiple sources and generating their own informed opinions. I think it's a dangerous path to start heading down where maybe in the future sources that Facebook doesn't agree with can start getting left out.

Nevertheless it's Facebook's platform and they aren't limited by the First Amendment so they can inevitability do what they want. I guess if enough people requested it then they're just giving the people what they want.

I agree. News, by its nature, is biased, because it he topic has been selected by someone, as are the actual details provided. So consider a piece of news in tandem with the source - always. And as you said - even better: use multiple sources for the same subject. Foreign sources often can be quite surprising on national subjects, BTW.