Facebook said it decided to no longer rely on news outlets to post its “trending topics” despite uncovering no evidence that it suppressed conservative news.

The giant social network announced the move Monday after a backlash over a report saying its choice of news content was politically motivated.

Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch outlined the conclusion and the change in a 12-page letter sent Monday to Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., chairman of the commerce committee, which oversees the Internet and consumer protections.

“Our data analysis indicated that conservative and liberal topics are approved as trending topics at virtually identical rates,” Stretch said in a prepared statement. “We were also unable to substantiate any of the specific allegations of politically-motivated suppression.”

As part of its changes, Facebook will stop looking to news outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post and Drudge Report to automatically nominate topics for its trending feature. It also automatically nominates topics based on a spike in user posts about a subject.

The move comes less than a week after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Glenn Beck and other conservative commentators to address concerns stemming from a report in the tech blog Gizmodo.

The report relied on an anonymous former Facebook worker with self-described conservative leanings.

“In our meetings last week, we received feedback that any list — even a good one — inherently raises questions of which publications are included versus which are not,” said Facebook spokeswoman Jodi Seth. “Based on this feedback, we felt that the best approach would be to clear up this issue by removing these lists entirely and focus on surfacing the conversation on Facebook.”

As part of its review, Facebook found that members of the team working on trending topics could temporarily suppress topics if news outlets weren't reporting on them enough.

Thune said in a statement he found Facebook's response “encouraging” though it revealed that its trending topics feature “relied on human judgment, and not just an automated process, more than previously acknowledged.”