Facebook’s Trending Topics is supposed to be a way of showing Facebook users topics that are trending at the moment, presumably based on an algorithm that determines how many times it’s been shared, the reactions it’s gotten, and so on. However a recent revelation has suggested that human editors play a role in curating those trending topics.So much so that they have been instructed to omit conservative news from the list. This is something that Facebook has since denied, but now according to a report from The Guardian, it does not seem to be the case. This is thanks to a set of leaked internal guidelines at Facebook (available in its entirety on The Guardian’s website) in which it pretty much confirms that human intervention is present and very heavily so.
According to The Guardian, “A team of news editors working in shifts around the clock was instructed on how to “inject” stories into the trending topics module, and how to “blacklist” topics for removal for up to a day over reasons including “doesn’t represent a real-world event”, left to the discretion of the editors.”
Now we should point out that these guidelines are actually similar to what more traditional news organizations use when it comes to selecting stories to be published, but it does contradict what Facebook’s vice-president of search, Tom Stocky, said when he made a statement that reads, “We do not insert stories artificially into trending topics, and do not instruct our reviewers to do so.”
In the meantime the US Senate has asked Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg for an explanation over these allegations.
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