washingtontimes : Facebook apologizes after touting fake news article that calls Megyn Kelly a 'closet liberal'

Facebook apologizes after touting fake news article that calls Megyn Kelly a 'closet liberal'

Facebook apologized Monday for promoting a fake story on its list of trending news articles only three days after the social network replaced its team of content curators with a computer algorithm.For several hours Monday, Facebook's "Trending" list prominently touted an article that erroneously claimed Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly had been fired from the network for being "a closet liberal who actually wants Hillary to win," referring to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.The article was published by the partisan news site "End the Fed" alongside a story that suggests former President Bill Clinton wants to rebuild Detroit with Syrian refugees, and Ms. Kelly's name is misspelled the second sentence.

Three days after removing human editors, Facebook was already trending fake news

Facebook announced Friday that humans would no longer write descriptions for its Trending topics list, handing over even more responsibility to the already-powerful algorithm.But just days after the policy change, Facebook's algorithm chose a very bad, factually incorrect headline to explain to its news-hungry users why Megyn Kelly was trending.The headline, which was visible to anyone who hovered over Megyn Kelly's name on the Trending list, refers to the Fox News personality as a "traitor" and claims that the cable channel has "Kick(ed) her out for backing Hillary." (They have not.)

Facebook trends a fake Megyn Kelly story days after sacking its human editors

The Facebook trending bar has become a contentious point in media having been plagued by accusations of human bias against right-wing sources in the US, during the weekend however, it failed to suppress a fake right-wing story.The social media network sacked its entire news editing team on Friday, the department which collated and described the trending current affairs on the site.It now relies upon algorithms and engineers likened to janitors to confirm content is linked to current affairs.