How a fake news story about Megyn Kelly wound up trending on Facebook
by: Ben Lawson, Newsy Updated: Aug 30, 2016 - 4:54 AMFacebook is having some troubles with its trending news topics — most recently, the top of its trending list featured a headline that doesn't appear to be true.>> Watch the video from NewsyThe story was reportedly featured for several hours before being removed.It said Fox News host Megyn Kelly was a "closet liberal" and that she was getting forced off the network by Bill O'Reilly.
Facebook 'trending' featuring fake news hours after humans replaced with robots
Hours after Facebook fired its "trending" news team and replaced it with robot curators, the social network's news section featured inaccurate and potentially offensive articles.The stories that appeared in the trending news box were previously curated by journalists, who would weed out links that weren't high quality or from well-regarded publications.Facebook has replaced these human curators with an algorithm that has proven to be less picky when it comes to the weeding.
Facebook posts fake news after replacing humans with algorithms
The trending news algorithm isn't working as well as Facebook had hoped.Photo: ShutterstockFacebook's decision to replace trending news editors with algorithms is backfiring spectacularly, with the automated system posting a fake news story and links to a video of a man masturbating with a McDonald's sandwich.The social media giant announced the change in a statement posted on Friday, arguing that it would allow the company to "scale Trending to cover more topics and make it available to more people."
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