qz : Why Facebook (FB) is about to realize that news is hard — Quartz

Why Facebook (FB) is about to realize that news is hard — Quartz

After firing 26 contractors tasked with curating the world's news for Facebook users, the social media company is now relying on an algorithm do their jobs.Algorithms run most of Facebook already: They individually populate each user's News Feed, assist with search, and automatically tag photos.But news provides a more complex challenge.

A former Facebook news team worker says management basically ignored them

Facebook reportedly fired the team responsible for curating its Trending Topics news section on Friday — now someone who worked on the team has described what it was like to work there.In a series of tweets on Monday, a former Facebook contractor named Saira Khan shared the 14 "best and most absurd" things she saw while working on the social network's news team.She claims that Facebook managers said contractors on her team didn't have paid time off because they were already making "adult money" and weren't married or parents.

Facebook highlights false news story in its trending topics

Megyn Kelly is trending on Facebook for an article that has no basis in reality.pic.twitter.com/31f4ERnzHI — Kyle Blaine (@kyletblaine) August 29, 2016This comes just a few days after Facebook announced that humans would no longer write descriptions for trending topics, instead letting an algorithm pull relevant excerpts of the articles to display beneath the topic.Despite that, humans are still responsible for deciding what topics are worthy of hitting Facebook's trending area, but an individual user's experience will vary based on a number of factors.