After flak, Facebook to tweak ‘trending topics’

San Francisco

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. The world’s largest social network said in a blogpost that it was introducing several changes, including  elimination of a top-ten list of approved websites, more training and clearer guidelines to help human editors avoid ideological or political bias, and more robust review procedures.

Earlier this month, a former Facebook contractor had accused the company’s editors of deliberately suppressing conservative news. The allegations were reported by technology news website Gizmodo, which did not identify the ex-contractor.

Mark Zuckerberg met last week with more than a dozen conservative politicians and media personalities to discuss issues of trust in the social network.