Facebook removes “Trending” news story descriptions

Topic rankings now controlled by algorithms

Before the start of the weekend, Facebook announced some notable changes to the way its social network would be handling “Trending” news topics, which previously contained topic descriptions curated by staff members and were verified through a non-algorithmic editing process.

Image source: Facebook Newsroom

News topics are now automated, but content curation still human-driven

On Friday, the company said it would be making its newsfeed “more automated” by placing control over relevance and popularity into the hands of its algorithms, rather than requiring staff members to write long editorial descriptions of each trending topic around the clock. This basically means that news stories like “Mars” and “Louisiana Flood” will only show the amount of people sharing information about them in any given moment, but will not give story descriptions unless a user hovers over the links.

Image source: Facebook Newsroom

Instead of Facebook writing the descriptions, its algorithms will now pull a short description directly from the content of a top trending original news story. Human editors will still, however, be responsible for making sure that the topics supplied by its algorithms are categorically relevant to its various news topics, without interference from popular day-to-day hashtags like #lunch or #MusicMonday, for example.

Algorithm-controlled trending topics may avert political focus

The move to an AI-focused news curating process comes during a time when the company was recently criticized for routinely down-ranking particular news results while curating which stories appeared, and that it “often depended on the taste of individual supervisors,” according to NPR. Facebook responded to the editorial screening accusations with direct statement from CEO Mark Zuckerberg and another from Tom Stocky, director of Trending Topics.

Of course, the big question is whether the social networking company can fully address the former allegations with the new changes made to its more autonomous newsfeed design. The company formally claims there was no alleged political bias in its product after thorough investigation, but this conclusion is a topic of interest much left to the discretion of its users at large.

The company now alleges, “Still, making these changes to the product allows our team to make fewer individual decisions about topics. Facebook is a platform for all ideas, and we’re committed to maintaining Trending as a way for people to access a breadth of ideas and commentary about a variety of topics.”