MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Gizmodo, a technology new website, claimed Monday that the Facebook news column, which shows news highlights trending around the world, was manipulated by contractors to "routinely suppress" stories appealing to US conservatives.
We do not manipulate Trending Topics, says @tstocky. Now it's @Gizmodo vs. @facebook. https://t.co/GLsV74zr1t pic.twitter.com/8N16IHu6Ng
— Simon Hurtz (@SimonHurtz) 10 May 2016
"We take these reports extremely seriously, and have found no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true," Facebook Search head Tom Stocky, in charge of Trending Topics, wrote in his account.
He stressed that Facebook "does not allow or advise our reviewers to systematically discriminate against sources of any ideological origin and we've designed our tools to make that technically not feasible."
Popular topics are identified by an algorithm and then audited by special review team members to confirm that they are truly trending news in the real world.
