Facebook fires trending team, and algorithm without humans goes crazy [View all]
Facebook fires trending team, and algorithm without humans goes crazy
Module pushes out false story about Foxs Megyn Kelly, offensive Ann Coulter headline and a story link about a man masturbating with a McDonalds sandwich
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/29/facebook-fires-trending-topics-team-algorithm
Just months after the discovery that Facebooks trending news module was curated and tweaked by human beings, the company has eliminated its editors and left the algorithm to do its job. The results, so far, are a disaster.
Facebook announced late Friday that it had eliminated jobs in its trending module, the part of its news division where staff curated popular news for Facebook users. Over the weekend, the fully automated Facebook trending module pushed out a false story about Fox News host Megyn Kelly, a controversial piece about a comedians four-letter word attack on rightwing pundit Ann Coulter, and links to an article about a video of a man masturbating with a McDonalds chicken sandwich.
A source familiar with the matter told the Guardian that the trending team was fired without notice in a meeting with a security guard present. The ex-employees received four weeks severance.
The past weekend has been less than auspicious for Facebooks new, inhuman workforce: on Saturday, the site pushed an article to some of its users entitled: BREAKING: Fox News Exposes Traitor Megyn Kelly, Kicks Her Out For Backing Hillary. Megyn Kelly is still employed by Fox News and has not endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.