Facebook Edits 'Trending' -- WSJ
August 27 2016 - 3:03AM
Dow Jones News
By Deepa Seetharaman
Facebook Inc. said Friday it is letting software almost entirely
drive what appears in its "trending" feature, scaling back the
human intervention that led to allegations of political bias
earlier this year.
The social media giant said it is eliminating the descriptions
that have typically accompanied the topics and headlines that
appear in the "trending" feature, which is distinct from the
Facebook news feed. Those descriptions were written by contract
workers hired by Facebook called "news curators."
Now, instead of a story description, users will see just a
hashtag or a topic and a tally of how many other are talking about
that particular topic online based on original posts as well as
articles and posts shared by users on the topic -- similar Twitter
Inc.'s trends lists.
"Making these changes to the product allows our team to make
fewer individual decisions about topics," Facebook said in a blog
post.
The increased automation of the "trending" feed is a response to
criticism, revealed in a May report by tech blog Gizmodo, that
curators altered what appeared in the list for political reasons.
Facebook denied bias but also acknowledged that its curators had
more oversight over what appears in this feed than it previously
disclosed. The company also said at the time it would revamp the
feature to minimize the potential effects of individual biases.
The trending topics feed is set to the right of the news feed on
Facebook's desktop page; it appears on the mobile app when a user
taps the search bar. Facebook's algorithm selects topics for
trending if a lot of people are talking about certain articles and
photos, and if there is a sharp increase in popularity in a short
period.
If users want to see what others are saying about a topic, they
can hover over it or click to see more. They will see a description
from a news article that Facebook says is automatically
selected.
Users see different subjects in their trending feature depending
on data Facebook has collected about them: their likes, location
and other topics they have clicked on.
Facebook said there are still people involved in selecting what
appears as a trending topic. Their job will be making sure that a
topic deserves to "trend" by making sure is tied to a current news
event, among other things. For example, usage of the hashtag #lunch
spikes around lunchtime every day, but won't appear in this
feature.
Facebook didn't say how many contractors would be affected by
the change.
Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 27, 2016 02:48 ET (06:48 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)
Historical Stock Chart
From Aug 2024 to Sep 2024
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)
Historical Stock Chart
From Sep 2023 to Sep 2024