{"id":264119,"date":"2016-08-27T18:04:47","date_gmt":"2016-08-27T18:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=264119"},"modified":"2016-08-27T18:04:47","modified_gmt":"2016-08-27T18:04:47","slug":"facebook-news-team-fired-was-breitbart-responsible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/media-news\/facebook-news-team-fired-was-breitbart-responsible\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook News Team Fired &#8211; Was Breitbart Responsible?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Facebook has fired its Trending News team, responsible for curating the social media network\u2019s \u201cTrending News\u201d list, after\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/tech\/2016\/07\/13\/going-reveal-political-biases-facebooks-trending-news-team\/\"><em>Breitbart Tech\u00a0<\/em>began to reveal their progressive biases<\/a> last month. The team is set to be replaced by a team of engineers managing an algorithm.<\/h2>\n<p>Facebook\u2019s Trending News feature is supposed to present users with the most popular news topics being discussed across the platform. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/tech\/2016\/05\/12\/leaked-documents-confirm-facebook-deciding-which-news-stories-users-see\/\">But a Gizmodo\u00a0expos\u00e9 in May revealed that Trending News operated much like a traditional newsroom,<\/a> with a team of \u201ccurators\u201d selecting stories they considered newsworthy.<\/p>\n<p>It was later revealed that the team artificially injected stories that were not trending into the Trending News feed, and routinely suppressed topics that were of interest to conservatives.\u00a0In response, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/tech\/2016\/05\/10\/senate-investigate-claims-facebook-censor-conservative-news\/\">Republican Senator John Thune, Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, sent a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg<\/a> demanding answers.<\/p>\n<p>Eager to avoid further congressional action, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/tech\/2016\/05\/24\/facebook-concludes-internal-investigation-declares-not-guilty\/\">Facebook launched an internal investigation, which found themselves not guilty.<\/a> However, in their report they did acknowledge that the \u201cunintentional biases\u201d of its overwhelmingly progressive workforce might have led to bias in its Trending News curation.<\/p>\n<p>Last month,\u00a0<em>Breitbart Tech <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/tech\/2016\/07\/13\/going-reveal-political-biases-facebooks-trending-news-team\/\">decided\u00a0<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/tech\/2016\/07\/13\/going-reveal-political-biases-facebooks-trending-news-team\/\">to show the world just how biased Facebook\u2019s Trending News team were,<\/a> with a series of articles documenting the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/tech\/2016\/07\/15\/facebook-trending-editor-jennifer-jenkins-race-isnt-real\/\">wacky progressive views<\/a> of some of its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/tech\/2016\/07\/14\/facebook-trending-editor-ben-wagner\/\">leading team members.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Read more: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/tech\/2016\/08\/27\/entire-facebook-trending-news-team-fired-following-breitbart-coverage\/\">Entire Facebook Trending News Team Fired Following Breitbart Coverage &#8211; Breitbart<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Facebook has fired its Trending News team, responsible for curating the social media network\u2019s \u201cTrending News\u201d list, after\u00a0Breitbart Tech\u00a0began to reveal their progressive biases last month. The team is set to be replaced by a team of engineers managing an algorithm. Facebook\u2019s Trending News feature is supposed to present users with the most popular news [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":264120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,7,13,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-264119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-media-news","9":"category-sicence-technology","10":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}