Audio By Carbonatix
Facebook will remove the Trending news box that’s sat to the right of the desktop News Feed for the last four years, the company said today.
The removal comes after years of criticism around how Facebook picked stories to sit in the Trending box, not to mention more than a year of struggles with the reliability of any news being distributed through its platform.
The Trending box will be removed next week. Facebook says it was active in five countries and accounted for “less than 1.5 percent of clicks to news publishers on average.” The company is currently testing other ways to deliver news, including breaking news labels and a section that collects local stories.
The backlash against the Trending box started in 2016 after Gizmodo published a report saying that former Facebook editors — who were able to curate headlines, to a degree — claimed they “routinely suppressed” conservative stories.
Those allegations seem tamed in light of everything that happened next (the entire platform was co-opted for frequently conservative propaganda), but it led to Facebook firing its editorial team and was in many ways a precursor to some of the rethinking it’s been doing on news distribution.
On top of all that, the Trending box was just bad. It’s been a long-running joke that Facebook runs a day behind Twitter when it comes to news and jokes, and the Trending section rarely helped matters. The system does seem to have gotten faster at picking up stories over time, but it’s still hard to imagine it being the place someone learns about a major story.
Facebook says the removal of Trending will “make way” for future news products. It’s not clear if that means it’s planning something else for the side of the News Feed, or if it just means that it’s taking a different approach to distributing news in the first place.
Latest Stories
-
Mr President, Ghana was mentioned at the UN; why aren’t we talking about it?
43 minutes -
Accra to convene Africa’s regulators and markets on tokenisation at AVAS 2026
45 minutes -
The Paradox of Plenty — When every smartphone becomes a newsroom
1 hour -
GTA sensitises taxi drivers in ‘Know Ghana’ tourism campaign
3 hours -
Archbishop Agyinasare calls for responsible speech amid growing social media abuse
3 hours -
‘It will be inexcusable for gov’t not to honour payment of teachers’ arrears by 30th October’ – Haruna Iddrisu
3 hours -
Forbes’ World’s Best Employers 2026: No Ghanaian firm ranked among 900 companies
3 hours -
Electronic processing of teachers’ data: ‘The decision is the Controller’s’ – GES boss
3 hours -
Teachers’ Strike: Haruna Iddrisu questions paper-based processing of promoted teachers’ data
3 hours -
Savannah Region: Kunfusi bridge collapses again, leaving nearly 4,000 residents cut off
3 hours -
Teachers’ strike: GES targets Monday deadline to submit promotion data to Controller
3 hours -
Inflation to average 11.3% in 2027 – Fitch Solutions
4 hours -
‘I didn’t campaign for NDC to come and do this nonsense’ – Kpebu on EOCO’s conduct
4 hours -
Fitch Solutions maintains policy rate forecast of 14% by December 2026
4 hours -
Diaspora Nasara Caucus congratulates Mohammed Ali Suraj, new NPP executives
5 hours