Only hours after Facebook began automating their Trending Topics section, a fake story finds its way on there, demonstrating just how much nonsense floats across social media.
If you’ve noticed a change in the Trending Topics section on the right hand side of the Facebook newsfeed recently, it’s because Facebook has rid itself of the humans who write those small paragraphs next to each trending item.
Now it’s just the trending item and how many people are ‘talking’ about it that are displayed, and what items are chosen for the coveted Trending Topics section is now almost entirely decided by computer algorithms, with very little human oversight.
Facebook have previously been accused of political bias when it comes to choosing which topics to show as trending, so reducing human oversight was likely their answer to those accusations.
But oops. Only hours after automating the Trending Topics section, a story about how FOX anchor Megyn Kelly being outed as a “closet Liberal” who secretly wants Hillary Clinton to become president somehow makes its way onto it.
The fake story comes courtesy of website End the Fed, and titled – BREAKING: Fox News Exposes Traitor Megyn Kelly, Kicks Her Out For Backing Hillary.
End the Fed, like many other extreme-wing political websites, deals almost exclusively with a bizarre mix of clickbait, pseudo-nonsense news and lies, with very little basis in reality.
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But despite the persistent hogwash constantly churned out by the website, it has managed to garner a somewhat significant following, meaning some of the news it puts out can attract enough engagement to make it a viable candidate for Trending Topics, especially since many other extreme-wing sites merely copy and republish the content, without any apparent verification to its veracity.
Facebook quickly removed the story from its Trending Topics section and apologised. However this does illustrate the quandary faced by Facebook who have previously been accused of censoring right-wing content from their trending section, but when certain extreme right-wing pages are persistently rolling out nonsensical stories like this, some human oversight is clearly still needed.
Trending Topics is essentially Facebook’s most high profile way of promoting certain stories and topics. It’s their answer to Twitter’s inherent real-time model, and when fake news stories – especially politically biased stories – are given airtime on it, it’s going to cause a substantial dent to Facebook’s credibility. Hopefully Facebook will be more on top of it in the future.
Have you seen any dubious news stories promoted via Facebook Trending Topics? Let us know.