Facebook is company that makes millions billions per quarter, so when they got rid off 15 staffers that wrote their ‘Trending Topics’ descriptions it was pretty shocking and abrupt. The trending section has always had issues (claims of filtering out conservative news were made earlier this year), but at the very least real people were looking at things and doing some sort of checking.
Facebook has now moved away from people and relies on an algorithm that will pull news bits directly to your feed. These are supposed to be tailored for you, but personally this new feature is a nightmare. Gone are the human written descriptions, replaced by a name or general topic that require me to dig to find out what it is. This in turn lets Facebook think I’m interested in said topic, which means I get more crap I didn’t actually care about. It’s a fantastic system…
But it seems that isn’t the only problem with this new system. This fancy algorithm seems to have screwed the pooch only mere days after Facebook pulled the plug on real people with real jobs. That being said, Facebook does say that actual humans are still responsible for what topics get picked to get into the trending area, it’s just the algorithm that figures out what topics go to what users. Or so they say, but on to the problem.
It seems that an entirety fake news story made its way onto the ‘Trending Topics’ section over over the weekend and was promoted, and shared, for several hours before being pulled by Facebook. The false story was about Megyn Kelly, a Fox News personality, being fired from the network for supporting Hillary Clinton. Kelly has had a number on ‘incidents’ on air over the past several months with now Republican nominee Donald Trump. As of this writing the claims made are false with no source or validity.
This shows that the system can possibly be tricked by any supposed ‘media outlet’ that puts stuff on the internet. It’s a scary thought as there are tons of sites out there hiding behind a false media appearance looking only to push an agenda. It also brings up the question if there actually are humans entering news into the trending section, and then allowing the algorithm to handle things. It sure seems like a real person would have done a simple Google search to at least attempt to check the validity of the story.
The original, and only source, that the Facebook post cites is a conservative blog that seems pretty far right, even for most conservatives. The linked blog post also claims that Megyn Kelly is a ‘secret liberal’ whose ratings are slipping on the level of Rachel Maddow due in part to her attacks on Trump. Strangely enough, it also claims that Bill O’Reilly is behind the push to get her kicked from Fox News. It’s all very weird.
Facebook was quick to wipe all existence of the error, as searching for “Megyn Kelly” through the Facebook search won’t bring up any stories regarding her being let go. This in and of itself is troubling, as it looks like Facebook can simply make things go away when they get egg on their face.
Oh, and in case Facebook is scanning this outlet for juicy fake news stories: Half Life 3 has totally been confirmed. My nephews, neighbors, little cousin has an uncle who used to work at a Wendy’s that sometimes got people, that knew some people at Valve, and he said that someone there once ordered a number 3 off the menu!
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