Facebook Denies Manipulating Trending Topics

Facebook has been accused of manipulating trending topics. On the other hand, it has denied that it is using extra-algorithmic means to manipulate the trending topics.

It has been accused of using a team to manually manipulate the ranking of news, based on the leading stories in top 10 sites from across the world. Tom Stocky of the Facebook has denied these allegations and said that Facebook has no such policy to prioritise the news in an extra-algorithmic manner.

Speaking to the Guardian, former news editors from Facebook have said that this certainly does happen. Justin Osofsky, Facebook's vice-president of global operations also stands by the news processes that are in place:

Trending Topics uses a variety of mechanisms to help surface events and topics that are happening in the real world. In our guidelines, we rely on more than a thousand sources of news -- from around the world, and of all sizes and viewpoints -- to help verify and characterize world events and what people are talking about. The intent of verifying against news outlets is to surface topics that are meaningful to people and newsworthy. We have at no time sought to weight any one viewpoint over another, and in fact our guidelines are designed with the intent to make sure we do not do so.