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The Washington Post Tracked Facebook's Trending Topics For 3 Weeks, Found 5 Fake Stories and 3 Inaccurate Articles (washingtonpost.com)
An alarming number of people rely on social media, including and especially Facebook, for news. Over the past few months, we have seen how Facebook's Trending Topics feature is often biased, and moreover, how sometimes fake news slips through its filter. The Washington Post monitored the website for over three weeks and found that Facebook is still struggling to get its algorithm right. From the report: The Megyn Kelly incident was supposed to be an anomaly. An unfortunate one-off. A bit of (very public, embarrassing) bad luck. But in the six weeks since Facebook revamped its Trending system -- and a hoax about the Fox News Channel star subsequently trended -- the site has repeatedly promoted "news" stories that are actually works of fiction. As part of a larger audit of Facebook's Trending topics, the Intersect logged every news story that trended across four accounts during the workdays from Aug. 31 to Sept. 22. During that time, we uncovered five trending stories that were indisputably fake and three that were profoundly inaccurate (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source). On top of that, we found that news releases, blog posts from sites such as Medium and links to online stores such as iTunes regularly trended. Facebook declined to comment about Trending on the record. "I'm not at all surprised how many fake stories have trended," one former member of the team that used to oversee Trending told the Post. "It was beyond predictable by anyone who spent time with the actual functionality of the product, not just the code."The Post adds that "there's no guarantee" that it was able to catch every hoax, since it looked at Trending feature only once every hour.
The feature is called "Trending", not "Factual News". If I photoshop a picture of my cat flying a jet and it goes viral... it's trending. That doesn't mean he's actually flying the jet.
Here's some news for you... Satire can be popular.
Funny how that works, how she can commit crimes and the media chooses to ignore her evil ways.
So how many stories total did they track? Is 5 stories half the stories? Is it 5% of the stories? Without context '5 stories' is meaningless.
love is just extroverted narcissism
In this case the question is quite relevant. The Washington Post is slamming Facebook for publishing false or inaccurate stories; it's in their business interest to drive people away from FB and back to "real" media outlets. So why not ask if the Post is really better than FB?
The question is also very timely. The Washington Post has been publishing a constant stream of Trump-bashing stories and a constant stream of Clinton excuses. They are in no position to be tossing bricks at Facebook's news feed.
...anybody that chooses Facebook as their primary news source deserves all they get, including ridicule.
On the other hand, Hillary! and The Rapist Bill have made over $119 million since 2000, allthe while Hillary! was in either the Senate or the Cabinet. And as Harry Truman famously quoted: No man can get rich in politics unless he's a crook. It cannot be done. So who's wrong there? Was ol' Harry wrong about politics being a game that only financially rewards the corrupt, or are Hillary! and the Rapist Bill crooks?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Paid? I don't get paid to speak the truth.
But by my downmodding it is quite obvious Trumpettes don't want the truth to be seen. Which isn't surprising, facts don't matter to Trump.
"Waaa! Waaa! The polls are rigged!"
"Waaa! Waaa! The news is making me look bad by reporting what I said."
"Waaa! Waaa! The votes are fixed."
Talk about a whiner. If Hillary said the same things Trump is saying you'd be all over her, calling her a whiner and baby. But when Trump says it, "Uh huh. He's right you know. Guy is getting screwed."
Again, this is why Trump's propaganda is so effective. He caters to the base instincts of the base intellect of the lowest common denominator in this country. Trailer trash and angry white men eat up his crap because they can't take two seconds to think for themselves and see the reality of Trump.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower