Social Media

How A Fake News Story About Megyn Kelly Wound Up Trending On Facebook

Facebook is now using an algorithm instead of an editorial staff to decide which stories are trending.

How A Fake News Story About Megyn Kelly Wound Up Trending On Facebook
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Facebook is having some troubles with its trending news topics — most recently, the top of its trending list featured a headline that doesn't appear to be true. 

The story was reportedly featured for several hours before being removed. It said Fox News host Megyn Kelly was a "closet liberal" and that she was getting forced off the network by Bill O'Reilly.

SEE MORE: Facebook Is Working To Rid Your News Feed Of Clickbait

Except it doesn't look like that's actually happening. The false story from Ending The Fed links to a story from National Insider Politics, which links to a story from Conservative 101

That last site references a Vanity Fair piece about a feud between Kelly and O'Reilly — but that piece doesn't say anything about Kelly being a "closet liberal." 

This error comes a few days after Facebook got rid of the editorial team that curates its trending feed and started relying more heavily on an algorithm to detect which stories are trending. 

The social media giant has been fending off accusations that the editorial staff was either purposefully or accidentally biased against conservative news topics

So while it might be less likely for a computer program to be politically biased, it appears that its not as good as a real human at filtering out stories that are clearly fake.