Facebook’s fiddling with what appears to be a trending topic has had a ‘status update.’
An instruction guide published by The Guardian on Thursday shows that from start to finish the Trending Topics sidebar was designed to allow a small group of Facebook “news curators” to elevate, or suppress, topics and outlets.
The Guardian has documents outlining how this handful of editors handled what appeared as trending news. The ‘style guide’ is not exactly a smoking gun but it does contradict some of what executives have claimed after the initial story broke.
I suspect, like most of these large left-leaning media footprints, the tendency to hire employees that fit a “company culture” with a progressive ‘news-room’ like atmosphere, create a built-in bias that while not necessarily intentional becomes deliberate due to an absence of ideological diversity.
