An internal investigation took place into whether Facebook had any “systemic political bias” after Gizmodo reported that staff had intervened to ensure stories about Republican politicians were not shown to users. Facebook found no evidence for anti-Republican bias, but wanted to rule out any possibility.Facebook is thus making changes to its Trending Topics feature following claims that moderators were biased against right-wing news.
The social network will now stop relying on big news outlets like the New York Times and BBC to decide what to show the users, as a part of a raft of measures designed to rule out any possibility of bias.
Facebook spokeswoman Jodi Seth said "In our meetings last week, we received feedback that any list — even a good one — inherently raises questions of which publications are included versus which are not. Based on this feedback, we felt that the best approach would be to clear up this issue by removing these lists entirely and focus on surfacing the conversation on Facebook.”