Facebook came under a lot of criticism when liberal bias was found in their “Trending” section. The company denied the allegations, but have since fired everyone who aggregated news in the section and replaced them with a “neutral” algorithm to populate the section. That algorithm may need some adjusting.
The 15th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks is this Sunday. As such, the topic has been trending on the popular social media site. But the first story listed when a user searches that topic is a conspiracy story about how the World Trade Center was brought down by explosives placed throughout the buildings.
Screen capture from Facebook, September 9, 2016
The story, from something called The Daily Star, rehashes old conspiracy theories about fire not burning hot enough to weaken steel and claims about WTC Building 7.
Facebook removed human editors. (https://t.co/PdljXr2Cry) Now it is telling me 9/11 was caused by bombs, not planes. pic.twitter.com/X7Ug9khNVR
— Jessica Contrera (@mjcontrera) September 9, 2016
Facebook quickly “fixed” the issue and the story was removed from the section, replaced with a pictorial history of the attacks.