Facebook Changes Policies On 'Trending Topics'
Facebook said on Monday that it had mae improvements to its "Trending Topics" section after a news report alleging it suppressed conservative news prompted a U.S. Congressional demand for more transparency.
The company said an internal probe showed no evidence of political bias in the selection of news stories for Trending Topics, a feature that is separate from the main "news feed" where most Facebook users get their news.
However, the social network is introducing changes, including the following:
- Updated terminology in our Guidelines to make them more clear
- Refresher training for all reviewers that emphasized that content decisions may not be made on the basis of politics or ideology
- Additional controls and oversight around the review team, including robust escalation procedures
- Facebook will no longer rely on lists of external websites and news outlets to identify, validate or assess the importance of particular topics. This means Facebook will eliminate the "Media 1K" list, the list of RSS feeds used to supplement the algorithm that generates potential trending topics, and the top-10 list of news outlets.
- The company is also also removing the ability to assign an "importance level" to a topic through assessment of the topic’s prominence on the top-10 list of news outlets.
- Facebook will expand its Help Center content on Trending Topics to provide more information about this feature and how it works.
Earlier this month, a former Facebook contractor had accused the company's editors of deliberately suppressing conservative news.