Facebook's Trending Topics puts hoax story about 9/11 at top

Social media giant Facebook's news trending algorithm put a hoax story about 9/11 at top of its list, linking to an article by The Daily Star which claimed that controlled explosions destroyed the World Trade Centre Towers in 2001, a media report said.

"We're aware a hoax article showed up there and as a temporary step to resolving this we've removed the topic," tech website CNET quoted a Facebook spokesman as saying on Friday.

Facebook currently has more than a billion monthly active users, and its Trending Topics is prominent section for views, whether stories are true or not.

The 9/11 attack, like other trending topics, had landed on the list organically, from people anticipating the 15th anniversary of the terrorist attack, but the link associated with the topic had been plagued by the hoax article, the report noted.

The articles on the Trending Topics section are placed through an algorithm based on relevancy and time posted.

It replaces the links after an undetermined amount of time, without any human supervision or quality control, the report added.