9/11 conspiracy theory enters Facebook’s Trending Topics section

ByCraig Haley

It has only been a few weeks since Facebook removed their editorial team that looked after Facebook’s “Trending Topics” section.

That’s the team that ensured that nothing “un-newsworthy” appeared in the trending section on the right hand side of the newsfeed that is intended for trending, genuine news. But Facebook decided to replace the human touch with automated algorithms which would decide what appears there.

Only days after those Facebook algorithms took over did the trending topics section end up displaying a fake news article about conservative FOX news anchor Megyn Kelly being “outed” as a “closet liberal” who supported Hillary Clinton for president.

The story was false, and Facebook were forced to make a hasty apology for the error.


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But it doesn’t seem to be getting any better for the social networking site. Because this week, during the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the United States, the leading article displayed by Facebook in the trending topics section for the anniversary is a conspiracy story claiming to provide “proof” the twin towers were bought down with bombs, not the hijacked planes.

Once again Facebook were left red faced and had to quickly remove the conspiracy story from the trending section, a story that was published by notorious UK tabloid nonsense-paper The Daily Star.

Facebook removed the human editorial team amid accusation of political bias. However letting computer algorithms do the work is proving difficult, since they seem to be letting in obvious nonsense articles, even hoaxes. This is a problem since a large number of people now get their breaking news from social media, especially Twitter and Facebook.

And if Facebook don’t get a handle on their trending topics section soon, lots of people are going to be exposed to conspiracy theories, fake news and hoaxes under the guise of genuine news.