Much like the late Gawker, Facebook's goal is to draw the masses to the website. The goal is not to provide or distribute information, merely to share (and get users to share) content to keep people interested.
Also worth noting that, unlike Twitter, Facebook doesn't label paid posts as ads in its trending topics (they did start referring to posts as "sponsored" in the news feeds, finally). So there is no way of knowing which topics are trending due to popularity vs those somebody paid to make trending. On Friday, September 9, 2016, PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Sep 9, 2016 at 9:17 AM, Adam Bowie <a...@adambowie.co.uk > <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','a...@adambowie.co.uk');>> wrote: > >> Basically FB has fired the team that used to put manually put that >> trending sidebar together. This followed that report that suggested the >> team were too "liberal" and weren't including right-leaning stories in the >> trending section. >> >> Instead, FB has gone for an algorithmic approach, but so far with fairly >> disastrous results. There was a fake Megyn Kelly story a couple of weeks >> ago, when they first introduced it (more on that here: >> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/29/fac >> ebook-fires-trending-topics-team-algorithm), and now it seems to be full >> of click-bait and/or ultra-trivial rubbish. There's no filter, and whatever >> people are sharing goes in regardless of accuracy or importance. >> > > Wow - thanks, that is interesting. This raises so many questions for me. > One is, doesn't FB think there is a problem with a policy that prevents the > publication of one of the great and profound news photographs of all time, > but allows the publication of the headline: “SNL Star Calls Ann Coulter a > Racist C*nt”? Another, if their human editors were making biased decisions, > why not either train them to do better, or get better editors? Another, > while I am not an expert coder, isn't it pretty simple to make an > algorithm that only pulled stories from a list of even minimally reputable > sources? > > Or, maybe, why not just not push news stories at us at all? > > -- > -- > TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "TV or Not TV" group. > To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com > <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','tvornottv@googlegroups.com');> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com');> > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','tvornottv%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com');> > . > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- Kevin M. (RPCV) -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
