After redesigning its Trending News section earlier this year, Facebook has now made the section available on mobile.
In its fight to crush fake news, Facebook hasn’t only carried out algorithm changes or fine-tuned its Related Articles features. In May, the platform redesigned its Trending News section after coming under fire for not doing enough to stop fake news from appearing in people’s News Feeds. And now, the newly redesigned Trending News section will also be accessible on mobile – directly from the Facebook mobile app’s main navigation.
Currently, the feature is only available to users in the United States, but if all goes well, it will be rolled out more widely. The link to the section appears on iOS only so far, but will be coming to Android soon. Tapping on the Trending News button takes you to a list of stories ordered according the how much interaction they have received – likes, comments, or shares. Tapping on any of these topics brings up several related stories from various news sources, as well as posts from many influential users and Pages.
Trending News feature in Facebook iOS app. #Facebook pic.twitter.com/uFhsOibwz0
— Jose Gutierrez (@fbjag) August 9, 2017
The stories that appear there “are determined the same way as the featured headline — using 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.” Any publication can appear in the list, so Trending News is not affected by bias.
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