Facebook Abandons Human Editors to Manage its 'Trending Feature'

Facebook is  going to rely less on human editors to manage its 'Trending feature.'

Facebook's "Trending" allows users to see popular topics circulating in the last twenty four hours. Zuckerberg is planning to automate the feature to dramatically reduce the possibility of human bias in determining what is trending and what is not according to a post in Facebook's blog.

Net Neutrality

This latest update is Facebook's renewed attempts to tell shareholders, users and regulators its neutrality that it is not promoting a specific topic.

Facebook came under the scrutiny of US regulators in May this year after the company was criticized of vetting out conservative news which caused Republican Congressmen to demand the social media giant to be more transparent in what news it is promoting.

Facebook with its 1.7 billion users cannot deny its growing influence in global political and social discussions.

No Evidence of News Bias

Facebook conducted an internal investigation and apparently found no proof of bias. Nonetheless, to further reduce the potential for news bias, the company said it would not use human editors to control the topics that appear in its trending feature and instead it would display topics that users are discussing in real time. Facebook will also show the number people of discussing a particular topic.

Facebook said that its team would focus more resources on the technical aspect of the Trending feature. It would no longer need editors to write descriptions.