Quoth the former curator: “Every once in awhile a Red State or conservative news source would have a story. But we would have to go and find the same story from a more neutral outlet that wasn’t as biased.”

Well, there you go. Quite frankly there's a neutral editorial voice that FB wants to project. And so the main article has to be from a legitimate unbiased news source. Brietbart, Newsmax, and the like simply aren't.

Having a list of approved sources to highlight is really common I these types of products, because no one wants Stormfront to be on the front page.

Of the topics don't get out of the ghetto of subculture's echo chamber, it's never going to be approved. Even the topics cited are basically just birther conspiracy du jour.

Even if the topic gets approved with a different main link, everything is being shown on the results page, just not with a gold star next to it in the top slot.

The problem is that "legitimate unbiased news source" is subjective. Unless you only allow direct press agency news - and even here we have often the discussion which words and language is "loaded" - you are define what is neutral and not.

Personally I would regard Breitbart or Newsmax are just on par with HuffPo - for you they probably aren't. That's why pretending to know what others have to perceive as "legitimate unbiased news" is such a delicate issue that should not be done in secrecy.

Non-transparency on blacklisted sites and topics will always lead to distrust and the expectation of one-sided political shilling.

Meh. You have editorial control, and you know what type of voice you want. You enforce the voice. There's no point in trying to satisfy everyone because you can't. For example, Wikipedia was seen as a den of communist atheist propaganda and so Conservapedia was created.

Sure you could publicize your approved list of sites, but then you're just going to attract a bunch of people with an agenda to trying to promote their agenda by claiming some sort of slight by not being included. In the end though, the only honest response to this criticism is, "Screw you. Make your own site."

Topics aren't blacklisted except when they duplicate something else. Most topics simply aren't approved for trending. If you want to know what's not approved, look at Twitter trends, it's full of junk. Honestly, that's the best public example of what the trending topics algorithm detects.

You really need to read Tom Stocky's post about this, because that's exactly how it's run. But you don't really have to, because it's exactly what I told you.

Finally, if you actually click on any of the trends, pretty much everything on that page is algorithmic. Find a trend that mentions, Obama, I'm sure you're going to find a racist post on that list, because there's always scummy people.

PS. For the record, I always feel dirty if I visit HuffPo. Gawker on the other hand, I'll own up to reading that tabloid.