[beamatronic]

Serious question. When it comes to "Top Stories" or "News" or anything on Facebook, did anyone actually believe for real that it was purely the output of an algorithm and that no provisions were made to have a human in the loop? I doubt anyone ever thought that, so I'm not sure how anyone is surprised by any of this.

[DanAndersen]

Consider how often the 24-hour news networks would fill their time by talking about "what's trending" on Twitter or Facebook or the like. The implication is obviously that the fact that they are trending is a newsworthy thing in and of itself, that it's some sign of "people making something go viral."

I don't think people necessarily thought that it was a purely automatic algorithmic creation (although I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case -- remember that most people are not nearly as tech-savvy as the HN crowd in knowing what is or isn't likely to be the result of "pure algorithms"). But the fact that it's called "trending" inherently implies that it's a representative snapshot of what the current attention ecosystem is -- that it's a passive record into what "is trending." By manually inserting or removing things from the "trending" list, that creates a false impression that certain things are or aren't popular.

[dba7dba]

You are way overestimating the ability of average FB (or American ?) users to think logically or judge something rationally.

I'm not saying they are dumb. I'm saying not that many would stop and seriously think if 'trending' news section on FB was possibly being used for spreading propaganda.

[ssalazar]

This. I assumed this whole feature was bought and paid for when stories like "Jennifer Lawrence shares pictures of her dog" would regularly pop up. If you assumed their curation process was fair or unfiltered, you fooled yourself.