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Facebook Dumps Personalized 'Trending Topics' After Backlash (cnet.com)
As the company works to strengthen its reputation as a place for news and curb the spread of misinformation on the site, Facebook announced it has removed the personalized interest-based list of news topics on the right-hand side of your news feed. Now everyone in a geographic region will see the same trending topics. CNET reports: In addition to doing away with the personalized list, there are two other big changes to the trending topics section that will start rolling out today and will take place for everyone in the U.S. "in the coming weeks." First, instead of just seeing a bare-bones topic, like "Saturn" or "X-men," two things that had been trending for me, you'll see a full headline from one of the news stories about that topic. That's the headline that had always popped up when you hovered over the topic. Second, Facebook is changing the way the topics are selected. The topics had been chosen based on how many people on Facebook are engaging with it. With the new changes, Facebook will look at the number of outlets posting stories on a particular topic, and decide its inclusion based on engagement around that group of articles. "This should surface trending topics quicker, be more effective at capturing a broader range of news and events from around the world and also help ensure that topics reflect real world events being covered by multiple news outlets," Will Cathcart, vice president of product management, said in a statement.
How about a 'Trending for you' list and a 'Trending in your region' list? Best of both worlds. I can hide which one I don't want to see.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
I've been using Facebook Purity for months now. It has a feature that allows you to hide the entire Trending Topics box. I had to install it for sanity's sake during the election to filter certain words (I had hard core friends on both sides of the political spectrum), but I kept it active to hide the dumb crap Facebook keeps foisting on me like Trending Topics, Suggested Posts, 5000 different game requests, etc. It has made using Facebook a lot less painful, I highly suggest it.
and also help ensure that topics reflect real world events being covered by multiple news outlets
Since most mainstream news outlets have a pretty strong liberal bias, this will also have the practical effect of burying stories with a conservative bent and highlighting those with a liberal bent (even when the liberal stories are dubious or "fake news," like with the infamous "golden showers" story).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Citing the fact that it was an unconfirmed report in the middle of an article does nothing when all the people on Facebook see is a trending topic and a headline. Do you really think that they are going to go read the article to see that it's unconfirmed?
People complained when the media didn't cover him enough, then they complained they covered him too much (negatively). Now he's ELECTED and his supporters are still complaining. Is there anything we can do to make Trumptards stop being such pussy ass whiners? Is this the backlash to the SJW crowd, be even more of a spineless little cryhard?