Reports: Facebook Trending promoted 9/11 hoax story

Last Friday, the phrase “September 11th Anniversary” appeared in Facebook’s controversial “Trending” section. On the actual day of the attacks, however, the phrase is missing from the much-talked about part of the social media giant.

Last month, the company removed humans from processing trending stories to promote on their site. It appears the algorithm installed in their place may have made another bad error when it comes to America’s worst terrorist attack.

The Washington Post, along with several social media users, notes that when users went to click on the “September 11th Anniversary” trending topic, they were taken to a so-called “9/11 truther” promoting the false notion that bombs and not terrorist-piloted planes brought down the Twin Towers in Manhattan.

“We’re aware a hoax article showed up there,” a Facebook spokeswoman told the Post, “and as a temporary step to resolving this we’ve removed the topic.”  

Facebook’s new non-human attempt to curate human news has been riddled with errors. Just days after they stopped using people, the company was forced to apologize after a false story about Megyn Kelly appeared in the feed.