Facebook Changes Trending News

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...

Two weeks after a story surfaced on the tech website Gizmodo quoting an anonymous ex-staffer who alleged that members of Facebook's "Trending Topics" team had a bias against showcasing conservative interest stories, Facebook's general counsel said in a statement that the investigation has found no evidence of "systematic political bias."

"We were also unable to substantiate any of the specific allegations of politically-motivated suppression of particular subjects or sources," the statement read. "In fact, we confirmed that most of the subjects mentioned in media reports were included as trending topics...