Facebook denies claims they manipulate trending topics

Gizmodo has an article where anonymous ex facebook workers claim that they manipulated trending topics. Inserting topics to trend, such as black lives matter, and removing topics from trending, such as conservative news stories that were naturally trending.
Today Tom Stocky posted this to Facebook, he is head of the team responsible for trending topics, denying the allegations wholesale.

My team is responsible for Trending Topics, and I want to address today’s reports alleging that Facebook contractors manipulated Trending Topics to suppress stories of interest to conservatives. We take these reports extremely seriously, and have found no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true.
Facebook is a platform for people and perspectives from across the political spectrum. There are rigorous guidelines in place for the review team to ensure consistency and neutrality. These guidelines do not permit the suppression of political perspectives. Nor do they permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over another. These guidelines do not prohibit any news outlet from appearing in Trending Topics.

control the news source. If they're doing it or not right now is just academic.