It stands out that Facebook is in for a long ride with the senate regarding the allegations being rendered against the giant social media company. It appears that Facebook is facing allegations regarding the choosing of trending topics and how there is systemic bias involved along the way.
Facebook says it's altering the makeup of its controversial Trending Topics section in response to a Senate inquiry over alleged censorship of conservative news sources and the company's news operation will no longer rely on a top-10 list of websites, according to The Verge.
The changes to Facebook's Trending Topics section comes in response to an inquiry opened by the Senate Commerce Committee earlier this month and the committee, led by Senator John Thune (R-SD), sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, according to the same post.
The retaliation of Facebook included the lists of websites named on the roster such as, The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post. All the more, in order to weigh the news as subject worthy, Facebook is utilizing assessing as many websites as it can and then uses the RSS feeds as well for the aiding of its algorithms.
Facebook further rendered their stance based on their statements. To prove the latter, "Our investigation has revealed no evidence of systematic political bias in the selection or prominence of stories included in the Trending Topics feature," Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch stated in the company's Official Newsroom page. Facebook says its data analysis proves liberal and conservative topics were approved for the Trending list at identical rates, while no evidence exists to substantiate the claim that certain news sources like The Blaze and Drudge Report were being suppressed.
"In fact, we confirmed that most of the subjects mentioned in media reports were included as Trending Topics on multiple occasions," Stretch added. However, he did acknowledge that Facebook "could not fully exclude the possibility of isolated improper actions or unintentional bias," so the company is changing up the formula to rely more heavily on algorithms.
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