Facebook promotes fake anti-Megyn Kelly news story to the top of the trending list [video]

Facebook learned the same lesson that Microsoft did just a short time ago – you can’t let AI run amok on social media, lest it do this:

Earlier this year, Microsoft unleashed an artificially intelligent persona “Tay” on twitter – but soon learned that twitter had become unleashed on Tay:

"Tay" went from "humans are super cool" to full nazi in <24 hrs and I'm not at all concerned about the future of AI pic.twitter.com/xuGi1u9S1A

— gerry (@geraldmellor) March 24, 2016

Facebook removed humans from trending news curation after being heavily criticized for bias. Replacing them with an algorithm probably made sense in the FB world, but nowhere else.

To be fair, one gathers a lifetime of experiences and interactions and uses those to gauge what is or is not fair. An algorithm cannot do that. It is at the mercy of its programmers to think of every possible scenario. In the case of a millennial code-jockey – what are the odds that will go well?

Then.. add in the internet. Trolls, hackers, paid “reputation” companies and just everyday social media geeks. Some will try to game the algo just as a challenge. Others will do it because they are paid to – either way – they will game the system and make a fake, libelous and terribly-written news story the #1 trending news post of the day.