In a bid to ensure that the news received by a reader is free from bias, and that he or she is free to form their own, knowledge driven conclusions about a topic, Facebook has decided to expand the selection of articles it offers to its readers. The company will now show you a whole carousel of articles about a topic, when you click on something that is trending.
Trending topics are also acquiring more real estate on the platform. Instead of showing you these topics when you initiate a search for something, Facebook has come up with a box that will contain the top three current Trending topics inside the News Feed.
Meanwhile, the idea behind showing you a carousel is this: We usually read news from sources we follow. And that news is likely to lean in a particular direction. For instance, a liberal is likely yo have liked pages that support the ideology. However, the carousel doesn’t necessarily consist of sources that you have subscribed to. So there is a chance that you may come upon articles that don’t adhere to your beliefs and in reading that, you may also gain a new perspective.
Of course, this path has its own dangers. People will start creating their own alternatives to straightforward news and that could lead to significant problems as the platform gets flooded with fake, or useless news. Facebook is going to have to find a way to ensure that this tendency to sensationalize news and create worthless articles is kept in check and the content that is presented in the carousel is one that can actually serve to introduce a person to different views.
Facebook has been making other efforts in the direction as well. For instance, the company has recently allowed users to follow topics and receive news about it from different publishers. All these efforts if handled correctly, could well see people stepping out of there shells and accepting new ideas and thoughts.
