
Facebook fires trending team, and algorithm without humans goes crazy - oldbuzzard
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/29/facebook-fires-trending-topics-team-algorithm
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kevincox
I find it hard to believe that fb released this without first testing it in
the background for at least a week. That being said, what caused the algorithm
to start producing bad results so shortly after it was released. Was it just
bad luck or was someone playing the system?

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cpeterso
> Under Facebook’s old guidelines, news curators stuck to a list of trusted
> media sources. Neither of these sources were on that list.

And if they are replacing humans with algorithms, why ditch the existing list
of trusted media sources? They are orthogonal changes. The trusted sources
list would have kept the algorithms on a tighter leash.

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kevincox
Great point. Something definitely seems odd about this mistake.

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joobus
Maybe firing the team just revealed a bad algorithm, and now they should fix
the algorithm.

