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In what’s likely a surprise to many Facebook users, the stories appearing in the “Trending” news section in the upper right of the page are actually chosen by people instead of machines pulling up what’s most popular, and a former employee is charging that there is an anti-conservative bias in choosing what appears there.

Automated systems actually do identify stories that are most popular on Facebook, but it’s up to journalists called “news curators” to choose from those stories what will appear in the “Trending” section. Gizmodo yesterday (May 9th) cited several former curators as saying they were often told by managers to select certain influential stories for the section when they really weren’t trending, such as “#BlackLivesMatter” or the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and one particular ex-curator who is politically conservative also charged that conservative-leaning stories were often left out from the section even though they were trending on the site. The accusation is particularly troubling since Facebook is one of the most powerful news distributors online. Facebook is denying the claims, saying, “We take allegations of bias very seriously. Facebook is a platform for people and perspectives from across the political spectrum. . . . Guidelines for Trending Topics] do not permit the suppression of political perspectives. Nor do they permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over another.”