Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

what's a Facebook?

 

Then don't use facebook if you don't like their curated news - nobody cares.

 

I thought Facebook was a place where you told people what you had for dinner last night or what your kid did in sports/school/date...

 

I'm still trying to figure out what conservative news is. I thought "news" is topical current events.

But it sounds like a non-story. Wanting to downgrade the feeds from non-mainstream outlets for a small space that is supposed to include the main headlines of the day is not exactly a conspiracy. I also don't want to see every salacious VICE and HuffPost headline in there either. Facebook is already full of paid content and click bait in the regular feed as it is.

 

This reply is a great example of the less common type of ad hominem argument.

 

Is Facebook obligated by law or ethics to deliver unbiased news?

I've never had FB, so maybe I'm not aware of how that works. I mean, we don't even have a single news outlet that delivers unbiased news, and that's literally their one job.

 

Well, it seems like the curator system is just hampered by the opinions and political biases of the curators themselves. As far as I'm concerned Facebook has given them enough autonomy to decide what gets kept or suppressed.

At the end of the day that doesn't point itself to an anti-conservative agenda at the management level. It really is just a result of Facebook having more liberal staff than conservative staff. And what can you realistically do about that? Start firing and hiring people based on their political leanings? Suppress liberal news that people agree with to serve the conservative minority? I don't mean to be disparaging but the Facebook demographic is going to be left leaning and the news/trending news is going to reflect that.

They really need to expand on this. This is a bit duplicitous, but then again Facebook shouldn't be your news source: liberal or conservative. In reality, and seeing as how this is a common argument in this thread: how people can be influenced because of these political leanings... Facebook is an echo chamber. I have conservative and liberal friends and I'm 100% sure most of the news they circulate and read are from their own shares on their timelines. Not from the trending tab. It really is an echo chamber for both sides in most cases; the trending tab is not as significant for influencing political thought processes as people might assume.

I find nothing wrong with this. It is about credibility and banking on CNN, BBC, NYT, even Fox News to do their due diligence is far more reliable process than taking some of those crazy extremist blogs sources and pieces at face value.

 

incorrect, Zuckerberg wants to replace his staff and all staffs with extraordinarily expensive computer science experts who can help automate different categories of white-collar labour.

Even the mid-tier of entry-level PMs rack up at 200k+, and it doesn't matter which country you're from if you pass the bar.

 

Dear Deji,

We love your position on this topic.

Sincerely,

Chinese Sensors

 

Spoiler

These are all fair points. My issue is with the injections and the fact that I assumed that the trending stories were algorithmic, not curated by people with biases. Wouldn't it be useful to have a section that's purely based on what's actually trending, regardless of where it came from (as JuanValdez mentioned)?

 

I think Facebook and a bunch of other tech monopolies have way too much power. It's the flipside of Peter Thiel's argument in Zero to One about creative monopolies--the power they wield to gain their surplus is used on their customers. A large chunk of humanity has essentially traded structured data about their preferences for social utility, myself included, but that has created large structural tech monopolies that have actually been somewhat restrained in the use of the power they've gained.

I do find it amusing that people who are fans of the free market, and the concept that speech is money, suddenly find now the time to rile against corporate power. This is the free market at its finest. Facebook has no responsibility to provide you an objective view of the world that doesn't create shareholder profits.

 

Zuckerberg sure has learned a lot from the Chinese.

 

It's legal, but I think it's wrong for Facebook to use its technology to shape a debate because its management is of a certain opinion. “Facebook got a lot of pressure about not having a trending topic for Black Lives Matter.” If Facebook's users aren't interested in Black Lives Matter, I don't think Facebook's curators/management should shove it into people's faces. It goes both ways: I also don't think a conservative story like the one about Kim Davis should be forced on people just because Facebook execs think it's important either. So how do you solve this? You make it unbiased by letting the algorithm sort the top news from reputable sources based on what people are talking about, and you cut the curators. I'd assume that's Facebook's goal, but the injections need to stop.

 

No worries. Money and power doesn't alter opinions and votes. Also, government should get out of the way and they'll do the right things.

 

The article does mention why they need to have a curator/injection system. Primarily with breaking news like the MH370 flight and the Charlie Hebdo attacks mentioned in the article that didn't trend enough to be considered trending news; they injected that.

In addition its a PR thing for Facebook. Why isn't Facebook talking about [XXX]? Are they against it? They need to satisfy the majority and in Facebook's case that happens to be liberals. If the demographic tables were turned it would be the same way: pander to conservatives. To your point though, I'm not a fan of Facebook manipulating people and abusing their power and influence. I want to use Facebook to stay in touch with friends, not to subconsciously alter my political leanings. It really is the consequence of the modern tech culture in that people believe they need to change the world instead of do the job and provide the function their app, website, or company is selling.

In that regard, Reddit does a much better job tracking trending news because of its subreddit system. Does it create shallow echo chambers? Of course, but news is not suppressed (in individual subreddits, not on the "front page" as a whole) as a result of the curators and content submitters being the users and community members themselves.

 

The Chinese are great at getting people to bend the knee thanks to 20th century capitalism. Mark will have learned that as well. As long as you have money, you'll be alright.

 

I don't see why its wrong for FB but not for MSNBC or Fox news.

 

Ah the irony!

I think it's legitimate for FB to filter out content - popular or not - that is factually untrue.

Those sites are known to push out false information and it's a stretch to call a blog a news site. I think FB has a right to filter out propaganda of any type.

 

If that's exactly what happened, then it's bad business.

I would suggest, however, that it is not wrong for Facebook to use its technology to shape a debate that simply helps its bottom line of having more users spending more time on Facebook. That is the 99% most probable case.

Let some Breitbart "news" piece about Obama's plan for re-education camps be "trending" and you risk a bunch of people just logging off. That's the occam's razor version of this stupid "suppressed" story.

They just want to keep their users and expand their base and addict them. Whatever will feed that beast will be chosen as the path forward.

It's a private business, people. Not a government or a public access station of some kind.

 

Exactly, if people are upset that there isn't enough Benghazi and Email scandal about "dear Leaders" then they can log off of FB and hang out on The Blaze.