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defrogITEM: The US Senate’s commerce committee is investigating whether Facebook is suppressing ideologically conservative news or stories from conservative organizations from its "trending topics" column.
The allegations originate from a story on Gizmodo citing anonymous Facebook “news curators” who say they were told to ignore certain stories and inject others into the column, regardless of how popular they were. Facebook denies this.
A few thoughts:
1. If Facebook is suppressing conservative content, you sure can’t tell from my newsfeed because I get an earful of batshit every day from that side of the aisle.
2. It’s reasonable to assume that Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) only really cares about this because of the alleged liberal bias. If news curators were ignoring liberal-leaning stories, I doubt he’d bother calling the committee to order over it. The same goes for any other conservatives who may be crying outrage over this.
3. Thune’s contention seems to be that because Facebook is a social media site and not a news organization, it’s subject to different considerations regarding political media bias, not least because Facebook itself states that the trending module only lists “topics that have recently become popular on Facebook” and is generally driven by algorithms, with minimal human input to confirm the algorithms are working.
4. The thing is, even if the allegations are true, there’s nothing illegal about it unless yr argument is that Facebook is guilty of misleading marketing. In terms of the First Amendment, free speech and fairness, there’s an eloquent argument out there that social media outlets – which are privately owned companies – can set whatever content policies they want, and are under no legal or constitutional obligation to be “fair”. Pretty much all online sites set content policies (to include policing trolls in the comments section). And technically there’s no law dictating that any media outlet has to be fair and balanced, so why should Facebook be any different in that regard?
Thune may be right that “Any attempt by a neutral and inclusive social media platform to censor or manipulate political discussion is an abuse of trust and inconsistent with the values of an open Internet.” On the other hand, “the values of an open Internet” doesn't mean every site on the internet has to give equal coverage to all issues. Furthermore, it’s disingenuous for him to complain about anything being “inconsistent with the values of an open Internet” since Republicans are currently ideologically opposed to net neutrality, which is very much an “open Internet” value.
5. The actual point of the Gizmodo story was that Facebook’s trending column is run pretty much like any other news media outlet – with a gatekeeper/editorial function that is subject to the personal biases of the editorial team. Those biases may be more or less balanced, or they may be along the lines of Breitbart or AddictingInfo. But they’re rarely 100% neutral.
It's also worth mentioning that, according to Gizmodo, Facebook’s editorial decisions on trending topics were based in part on whether the stories in question were (for instance) duplicate topics, hoaxes, poorly sourced, or a rumor going viral within its own particular echo chamber with no outside verification. For example, if a story breaks that Obama is planning a false flag terrorist attack to cancel the election and declare himself emperor, and it’s only being reported on World Net Daily and similar right-wing crackpot conspiracy sites who are basically just repeating what WND said, then it’s not necessarily a “trending” news story, depending on yr definition of “trending”.
However, this does raise a valid question: is trending by definition 100% organic? Should it be? Would it more useful if it is? If so, to who – you, or Facebook’s advertisers? (Let’s remind ourselves here that Facebook users are not customers – they are product for the actual customers – i.e. advertisers.)
If there’s any “scandal” here, maybe it’s that Facebook’s trending algorithms don't work that great without human monitoring. Personally I’d prefer more human curators than less. But then I’m old school and I’m an editor by trade, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?
(Also, I don't actually use the Facebook trending topics thing. So it doesn't matter to me how good Facebook’s algorithms are.)
And it probably doesn't matter in general because from here on out, most people won't be arguing about algorithms. They’ll be arguing over Facebook’s Big Fat Unfair Liberal Conspiracy against poor oppressed conservatives. There's a trending topic for you.
Antisocial,
This is dF
The allegations originate from a story on Gizmodo citing anonymous Facebook “news curators” who say they were told to ignore certain stories and inject others into the column, regardless of how popular they were. Facebook denies this.
A few thoughts:
1. If Facebook is suppressing conservative content, you sure can’t tell from my newsfeed because I get an earful of batshit every day from that side of the aisle.
2. It’s reasonable to assume that Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) only really cares about this because of the alleged liberal bias. If news curators were ignoring liberal-leaning stories, I doubt he’d bother calling the committee to order over it. The same goes for any other conservatives who may be crying outrage over this.
3. Thune’s contention seems to be that because Facebook is a social media site and not a news organization, it’s subject to different considerations regarding political media bias, not least because Facebook itself states that the trending module only lists “topics that have recently become popular on Facebook” and is generally driven by algorithms, with minimal human input to confirm the algorithms are working.
4. The thing is, even if the allegations are true, there’s nothing illegal about it unless yr argument is that Facebook is guilty of misleading marketing. In terms of the First Amendment, free speech and fairness, there’s an eloquent argument out there that social media outlets – which are privately owned companies – can set whatever content policies they want, and are under no legal or constitutional obligation to be “fair”. Pretty much all online sites set content policies (to include policing trolls in the comments section). And technically there’s no law dictating that any media outlet has to be fair and balanced, so why should Facebook be any different in that regard?
Thune may be right that “Any attempt by a neutral and inclusive social media platform to censor or manipulate political discussion is an abuse of trust and inconsistent with the values of an open Internet.” On the other hand, “the values of an open Internet” doesn't mean every site on the internet has to give equal coverage to all issues. Furthermore, it’s disingenuous for him to complain about anything being “inconsistent with the values of an open Internet” since Republicans are currently ideologically opposed to net neutrality, which is very much an “open Internet” value.
5. The actual point of the Gizmodo story was that Facebook’s trending column is run pretty much like any other news media outlet – with a gatekeeper/editorial function that is subject to the personal biases of the editorial team. Those biases may be more or less balanced, or they may be along the lines of Breitbart or AddictingInfo. But they’re rarely 100% neutral.
It's also worth mentioning that, according to Gizmodo, Facebook’s editorial decisions on trending topics were based in part on whether the stories in question were (for instance) duplicate topics, hoaxes, poorly sourced, or a rumor going viral within its own particular echo chamber with no outside verification. For example, if a story breaks that Obama is planning a false flag terrorist attack to cancel the election and declare himself emperor, and it’s only being reported on World Net Daily and similar right-wing crackpot conspiracy sites who are basically just repeating what WND said, then it’s not necessarily a “trending” news story, depending on yr definition of “trending”.
However, this does raise a valid question: is trending by definition 100% organic? Should it be? Would it more useful if it is? If so, to who – you, or Facebook’s advertisers? (Let’s remind ourselves here that Facebook users are not customers – they are product for the actual customers – i.e. advertisers.)
If there’s any “scandal” here, maybe it’s that Facebook’s trending algorithms don't work that great without human monitoring. Personally I’d prefer more human curators than less. But then I’m old school and I’m an editor by trade, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?
(Also, I don't actually use the Facebook trending topics thing. So it doesn't matter to me how good Facebook’s algorithms are.)
And it probably doesn't matter in general because from here on out, most people won't be arguing about algorithms. They’ll be arguing over Facebook’s Big Fat Unfair Liberal Conspiracy against poor oppressed conservatives. There's a trending topic for you.
Antisocial,
This is dF
