Facebook will change the way it manages the most popular topics of the day. The decision comes after the company was accused of manipulating the subjects trending , deciding what is popular or not, based on political preferences. The trending topics (popular topics) appear separate from other content on feed news and it is to them that many users turn to follow the main issues of the day. The social network Mark Zuckerberg denies the allegations, but admits changes. The criteria that weigh in the definition of what is or is not an issue trending will fail to take account of sites news and reflect the evaluation of social network users.
“He who oppresses political content or prevent people from seeing what else interests you is the opposite of our mission and our business objectives,” said Mark Zuckerberg’s company. “It’s important that Facebook continues to be a platform for all ideas,” can be read in a statement issued on Monday.
The first charges came across an article published by the blog Gizmodo . The statements of a former employee of Facebook said the decisions of what should or should not be the most seen by users of social networking departed deliberately conservative of the most popular topics of the day. After the matter became public, the US senator and chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, John Thune, wrote a letter to greater transparency in the selection of such content. Facebook moved forward with an investigation.
On 18 May, the creator of Facebook met with “a dozen conservative politicians” and stressed that “Silicon Valley has the reputation of being liberal, but that Facebook community includes more than 1.6 billion users, of all ideologies. – liberal to conservative, and all other including “
Zuckerberg also supported his argument using the example of Donald Trump: the controversial republican candidate has more followers on Facebook than any other presidential candidate
in a statement published earlier this week, Facebook says “found no evidence of a systematic political bias in the stories included in. subjects trending. ” “Our data analysis indicates that both conservatives topics as liberals are approved with virtually identical rates,” says the Facebook, which still refuses “specific allegations of oppression matters or private sources based on political motivations” .
However, the company recognizes that there may be room for “isolated actions improper without intention.” So, Facebook will “clarify the terminology in the guides” as well as invest in the training of “all reviewers [of the popular topics] to stress that the decisions can not be based on policies or ideologies” and introduced “additional controls and reinforcement supervision in the review team. “
to be able to” restore lost trust “in this feature, Facebook announced that it will fail to consider the lists drawn up by sites external to” validate or assess the importance of the issues. ” Moreover, it will also increase the content on the topic in the Help Center, which will explain more about this option and how it works.
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