News You Can't Use: Facebook Changes to Trending Topics Questioned After Blunder

Clearly the information gathering social media sites are the best source for your daily news, such as it is. If you need to know, and trust me you need to know, about chicken sandwich themed debauchery we definitely have you covered on the old data mining honey trap. If you're looking for basic, correct information on whether or not a news bunny got fired you might want to keep on walking, but hey, even the Superb Owl winners lost during the regular season and the important thing is you keep feeding us your personal information for our consumerism offensives and future relocation initiatives, etc.

Facebook's changes to its "Trending Topics" section are being questioned after it featured a false report about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.

False information coming out of your eyes, coming out of your...whatever.

The story posted Saturday falsely claimed Kelly had been fired by Fox because she secretly supported Democrat Hillary Clinton.

It seems reasonable enough, since we all know faux news (Ha! Get it? Do you get it????) is a fascist echo chamber that has been aggressively promoting Donald Trump for over a year. No really, you're supposed to believe this.

Another topic trending was #McChicken, which took users to stories about a video of a man using the McDonald's sandwich in a sex act.

Please die, modern world.

Facebook announced Friday that an algorithm would select trending topics in place of humans but human editors would still screen them.

We'll combine the errors generated by computers with good old fashioned human error and incompetence and the end result should be a highly satisfying mix of political gas-lighting and junk food pornography.

 El Oh El

Menlo Park, California-based Facebook has apologized for the Kelly story, telling CBS News its editors mistakenly thought it was legitimate before realizing the error. 

It confirmed all our prejudices, so we assumed it was true without doing any due diligence. Oh well, you forgive us, right?

Facebook says that the McChicken topic doesn't violate its content policy and that any trending topic that reflects a real-world event may be featured.

You know what, Mr. Putin, if you "accidentally" hit that giant red button no one would blame you.

Full Article.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.