No evidence on Trending News manipulation, says Facebook Search VP

A recent  report about Facebook manipulating Trending News section by suppressing conservative news had created quite a stir, and the social media giant soon released a statement refuting the allegations. Now, Facebook’s VP Search Tom Stocky has written a long post on Facebook explaining there is ’no evidence’ to prove the allegations are true. “Facebook is a platform for people and perspectives from across the political spectrum. There are rigorous guidelines in place for the review team to ensure consistency and neutrality. These guidelines 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. These guidelines do not prohibit any news outlet from appearing in Trending Topics,” Stocky has written. He also spoke about allegations around artificially inserting ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬  into trends. “We looked into that charge and found that it is untrue. We do not insert stories artificially into trending topics, and do not instruct our reviewers to do so. Our guidelines do permit reviewers to take steps to make topics more coherent, such as combining related topics into a single event (such as ‪#‎starwars‬ and‪#‎maythefourthbewithyou‬), to deliver a more integrated experience,” he explained. He said that the guidelines for Trending Topics are reviewed constantly and Facebook will continue to look for improvements. “We will also keep looking into any questions about Trending Topics to ensure that people are matched with the stories that are predicted to be the most interesting to them, and to be sure that our methods are as neutral and effective as possible,” he added. Earlier this week, the Gizmodo report received alarming response from some social media users and several journalists while commentators criticised Facebook for the alleged bias.  Not-so-long-ago, Facebook was also accused of restricting users from access about 30,322 emails and email attachments sent and received by Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state.