It turns out the algorithms that govern the internet can be as biased as the people who create and update them.

That may be the most surprising takeaway from the political bias scandal that has enveloped Facebook after former employees told the tech blog Gizmodo that they would sometimes suppress conservative-friendly items and promote liberal reports on the newsfeed's "trending topics" box.

Even if no humans were involved, however, the algorithm would not have been completely neutral because it was written by humans, digital media analysts say.

"I think there's probably no such thing as a neutral algorithm, just like there's probably never really such a thing as a truly neutral journalist," said Philip Napoli, journalism and media studies professor at Rutgers University.

"They get created and they evolve over time and they get tweaked. And there's no one author," Mr. Napoli said. "These algorithms are the result of years and years of modification and refinement and different people coming in and contributing. It's more dispersed."