Facebook's non-human attempt to automate their trending news area and eliminate human intervention has fallen short at many levels. The trending news section now uses an algorithm to curate stories for Facebook, using shares and posts as a criterion. However, rather than making things easy, the company's algorithm has been riddled with errors passing off hoaxes, satires and old news as actual news.
Recently, in memory of 9/11 attacks' 15th anniversary, the system made a notable error that promoted a hoax story about vicious terrorist attack on World Trade center that was supposedly triggered by bombs and not hijacked planes. Following this error, Facebook actively removed 9/11 from their trending topics links.
According to a tabloid, Daily Star, they had compelling proof that World Trade Center was a "controlled demolition" caused by bombs planted inside the complex and not by the hijacked planes. However, as the story started to gain a lot of attention, Facebook removed it from their trending news section.
While the news piece has long been removed since it was spotted by Facebook editors, many people were able to read the headline claiming that 9/11 was an inside conspiracy.
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"We're aware a hoax article showed up there," said Facebook spokesperson.
"And as a temporary step to resolving this we've removed the topic," reported Fox News.
Even though the trending news team is now fully automated, reports reveal that there are still human editors involved in the news curating process. However, they have far less involvement than there used to be. Since then, many false news items have slipped through Facebook's inbuilt filters and appeared in the trending news column, even if the news is absurd.
