Facebook news is selected by editors outside of the site’s algorithm, according to leaked documents released by The Guardian on May 12.
The social media platform, which is now the biggest news distributor in the world, is visited by 1 billion people daily.
The leaked documents come days after former Facebook employees who worked from mid-2014 to December 2015 told Gizmodo that the social media platform, headed by Mark Zuckerberg, routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from its “trending” news section.
A journalist who worked for Facebook told Gizmodo that employees averted stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, politicians Mitt Romney and Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from showing up in the section, even though they were organically trending.
Tom Stocky, Facebook’s VP for search and head of trending topics, hit back quickly, denying the accusations in a statement on May 9.
“We take these reports extremely seriously, and have found no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true,” he said.
