Facebook Changes

Facebook has announced changes to its Trending Topics after it was accused of political bias.

13:01 26 May 2016

After being accused of political bias and following an internal investigation, Facebook has confirmed plans to change the way it runs it Trending Topics feed. It said that staff will receive further training and that the feed will no longer rely on a list of news organisations including Washington Post, the BBC and Buzzfeed News, to validate subjects.

 

Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch said that an investigation was conducted after anonymous former employees accused the site of tampering with its Trending Topics feature, promoting “progressive” reviews and websites over content presenting views from the American right.

 

The investigation involved the analysis of 3,000 reviewer decisions and the interview of both current and former staff. The findings were revealed in a 12-page letter addressed to US Senator John Thune in response to the senator’s questions about the workings of Trending.

 

Currently, the Trending Topics combines AI and human input as well as popular subjects on the social network and sourced from 1,000 media organisations with potential subjects being suggested via algorithm an then reviewed by staff.

 

Mr Stretch explained that “as much half” of the topics suggested algorithmically are rejected “because they do not make sense at the time or are duplicative.”