Facebook has announced an update to its 'Trending' feature to make it more automated and remove the potential for human bias. In response to recent demands for more transparency from Republican members of the US Congress, Facebook said an internal probe had found no evidence of systematic political bias but it had still proceeded to make changes to maintain Trending as "a way for people to access a breadth of ideas and commentary about a variety of topics." Facebook said a more algorithmically driven process will now show users the most-talked about stories and topics on the top right-hand corner of their home page with simplified descriptions that are no longer written by editors.
In its blog post, Facebook emphasised that its Trending team will now simply oversee the results of the process and make fewer individual decisions about topics.
