After Facebook’s Trending column highlighted a conspiracy theory on Friday that claimed the Twin Towers were brought down by bombs on 9/11, the company has removed its “September 11th Anniversary” topic entirely. These blunders come in light after Facebook made changes to how the “Trending” topics are chosen to stop any bias from directing the selection of stories.
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The hoax post was promptly removed once Facebook was alerted to the post.
The gaffe comes one month after Facebook fired human editors from its Trending team, relying instead on computer algorithms to post trending stories to the social media site.
The 9/11 attack, like other trending topics, had landed on the list organically, from people anticipating the 15th anniversary of the terrorist attack, but the link associated with the topic had been plagued by the hoax article, the report noted. This is the second time when Facebook algorithms put in place to decide trending topics, has failed in as last few days. But the incident is yet another embarrassing moment for Facebook, whose Trending Topics product seems to create headlines as often as it highlights them.
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By 2 p.m., the leading link had changed to a Yahoo article about McCain criticizing the 2016 presidential election.
