Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Features 9/11 Conspiracy Theory as 'Trending' (slashdot.org)
Facebook is having a tough time with stories that trend on the social network. The company has been accused of gaming what it shows as "trending" on the site, and sometimes favoring things it showed to people. Not long ago, it fired the human editors who took care of it, but then earlier this month, a fake story about Megyn Kelly. It apologized for the slip, but it has happened again. The Hill reports: Facebook is taking heat yet again for its Trending Topics section after featuring a story from a British tabloid pushing a conspiracy theory that the World Trade Center collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, because of a "controlled demolition." Facebook users who clicked on the "September 11th Anniversary" trending topic Friday were presented an article titled "September 11: The footage that 'proves bombs were planted in Twin Towers.'"
"Trending" means it's popular. People won't watch (and share) something that they don't actually want to watch. Here's the thing though about those WTC and Building 7 videos: a simple analysis of any of the off-the-street real-time videos - of which there were several so it's not like they could all be faked - by using simple equations of motion from O'Level Physics it is undeniably obvious that the tops of all of those buildings are in free-fall, accelerating at 9.8 metres per second squared.
Now, if a building is hit two thirds of the way up and becomes damaged, you would expect that damage to cause the top to fall over. Maybe some of the outer walls would fall off, but there would be a central core at least 1/2 to 1/3 of the height of the building sticking up. Bits would hit other bits, and it would take a long time and there would be rubble strewn out across a wide area, damaging the surrounding buildings and killing or injuring the people in them. You certainly would not expect it to collapse in a tidy heap at the speed of gravity where the entire building becomes a neat pile of rubble without any kind of significant damage to surrounding buildings.
For a quite insightful analysis which goes beyond the above brief invitation to use simple physics equations, logical analysis and reasoning, you might want to read this: https://steemit.com/tyranny/@b...
Bottom line is: not everything that "trends" under automatic algorithms (which would be filtered out by humans too scared of what they're seeing) is bullshit.