Facebook Reduces Human Involvement in Selection of Trending Topics
Company responds to earlier criticism that selections were biased against conservative political topics
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Facebook Inc. is reducing human involvement in how it displays its Trending Topics after a controversy earlier this year over whether editors working for the social network operator silenced conservative news.
After conducting an internal investigation and saying it found no bias, Facebook is still retooling the trending news section to rely more on computers than humans. Instead of showing a headline and a summary, the trending topics will instead show an algorithmically selected topic, like "Olympics," as well as the number of people talking about it, the company said Friday in a blog post.