Facebook: Another day, another controversy

A recent report openly revealed Facebook's agenda, or information that has been kept from the public eye until now. In unequivocal words, the report has claimed that the biggest social network in all history has been relying on "human intervention at almost every stage of its news operation."

The Guardian reports on a 21-paged Facebook document that revealed guidelines on how the social network's news editors have the authority to inject stories into the 'trending' topics of today. Gizmodo, Facebook's former employee, passed on the same allegations earlier this week but didn't publish any corroborating documents.

In contrast, Facebook's spokesman stated that The Guardian had wrongly reported an older version of the news-editor guidelines. The following Thursday, Facebook published a partially redacted version of its guidelines supplemented by a blog post that offered some insight on how the editorial process functions.

Facebook's Vice President, reported that the organization doesn't insert stories "artificially" into trending topics. What does "artificially" mean anyway? As far as the editorial process is concerned, it's only logical that Facebook should have human curators, irrespective of the fact that it's the largest known social networking website in human history.

The problem arose when the company became hesitant to reveal over how it conducts its news operations. The Huffington Post learnt earlier this week that Facebook compels its news editors to sign stringent non-disclosure agreements, and has been keeping this information firmly non-public.

However, Facebook isn't accountable for the news appearing on the platform since this information is created elsewhere and belongs to other media organizations. So in essence, the news editors' role is only to clip on headlines on stories they read elsewhere.

To be clear on this subject, it doesn't mean that news is not naturally shared and distributed on Facebook. Despite Gizmodo's claim that Facebook's news editors suppress conservative news from being included in trending topics, The Huffington Post remarked that news from conservative sources are nonetheless widely shared over Facebook.

But when it really comes to 'trending' topics, Facebook is accused to shaping the entire conversation. But, why? Trending topics remain an important aspect and asset of Facebook's brand. Given the stature as the largest social network in history, Facebook essentially becomes the trend-setter. Writers across media-brands refer to Facebook's trending topics to get a general idea of what topics are hot in the here-and-now.

The only reservation people have against Facebook is that like any other respectable news organization, Facebook can also be transparent about its sources, as who originally published the content on Facebook. But so far, it's not. Could there be a silver lining? We'll find out soon enough.