Facebook is tweaking Trending Topics to counter charges of bias

Facebook has declared — again — that its Trending Topics section is free of any political bias or manipulation. However, the company says it is still changing the way it finds articles for the news section.

First, the declaration: Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch wrote in a blog post that the company met with Sen. John Thune, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, last week to discuss its trending news section, which came under fire after Gizmodo reported that Facebook employees were quashing conservative news stories from appearing on the list.

Facebook said at the time that this was not true. It reiterated that Monday in an open letter to Thune, in which it highlighted an internal Facebook investigation. "Our investigation has revealed no evidence of systematic political bias in the selection or prominence of stories included in the Trending Topics feature," the letter reads.