Entire Facebook Trending News Team Fired Following Breitbart Coverage

[unknown]

Entire Facebook Trending News Team Fired Following Breitbart Coverage

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/08/27/entire-facebook-trending-news-team-fired-following-breitbart-coverage/
   
Allum Bokhari
27 Aug 201618

Facebook has fired its Trending News team, responsible for curating the social media network’s “Trending News” list, after Breitbart Tech began to reveal their progressive biases last month. The team is set to be replaced by a team of engineers managing an algorithm.

Facebook’s Trending News feature is supposed to present users with the most popular news topics being discussed across the platform. But a Gizmodo exposé in May revealed that Trending News operated much like a traditional newsroom, with a team of “curators” selecting stories they considered newsworthy.

It was later revealed that the team artificially injected stories that were not trending into the Trending News feed, and routinely suppressed topics that were of interest to conservatives. In response, Republican Senator John Thune, Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, sent a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding answers.

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[kjam22]

Entire Facebook Trending News Team Fired Following Breitbart Coverage

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/08/27/entire-facebook-trending-news-team-fired-following-breitbart-coverage/
   
Allum Bokhari
27 Aug 201618

Facebook has fired its Trending News team, responsible for curating the social media network’s “Trending News” list, after Breitbart Tech began to reveal their progressive biases last month. The team is set to be replaced by a team of engineers managing an algorithm.

Facebook’s Trending News feature is supposed to present users with the most popular news topics being discussed across the platform. But a Gizmodo exposé in May revealed that Trending News operated much like a traditional newsroom, with a team of “curators” selecting stories they considered newsworthy.

It was later revealed that the team artificially injected stories that were not trending into the Trending News feed, and routinely suppressed topics that were of interest to conservatives. In response, Republican Senator John Thune, Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, sent a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding answers.

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You gotta wonder why they would have a "trending team" to begin with.   A fifth grader could write the algorithm.  Sounds like Zuckerberg covering his you know what.....

[geronl]

Here, sit there, your job is to monitor this HTML code, some of those tags might try to wander off.

[The_Reader_David]

You gotta wonder why they would have a "trending team" to begin with.   A fifth grader could write the algorithm.  Sounds like Zuckerberg covering his you know what.....

Indeed, "trending news" on a social media site should be determined entirely algorithmically.  Of course, one might want something a little sophisticated than a fifth grader's Python code, since detecting spurious trends created by botnets probably requires, maybe a junior in CS at a decent engineering school to code.

[r9etb]

Indeed, "trending news" on a social media site should be determined entirely algorithmically.  Of course, one might want something a little sophisticated than a fifth grader's Python code, since detecting spurious trends created by botnets probably requires, maybe a junior in CS at a decent engineering school to code.

Well, you have to admit that "Trending News" is a lot snappier than "Stories Our People Think You Ought To See, For Reasons Of Our Own."  A bit misleading, but no moreso than "trending news" in any other context.  If people haven't learned to be cynical of such content by now, it's their own damned fault.

That said: how typical of Brietbart to take credit for the results of Gizmodo's sleuthing....