I have no great love of conservative politics, but there's a convincing argument to be made that their ideas and views are routinely suppressed by media outside of explicitly partisan media outlets (i.e. Fox News or talk radio).
There are a number of studies that back up this claim. A 2008 study[0] found that 88% of journalists donate to the Democratic party. Jonathan Haidt has shown[1] that non-economics social sciences skew more than 14-1 liberal to conservative (and that universities have not always been so skewed).
For anyone who believes these statistics are not based on overt discrimination based on political viewpoint, a recent study[2] showed that discrimination by party is stronger than that of race. The study did so by reproducing a landmark study that demonstrated the existence of unconscious racial bias (the implicit association test), but instead using political indicators. They found that partisan political positions triggered implicit associations 50% stronger than that of racial biases. There is also a recent book called "Passing on the Right"[3] which provides some personal narratives of conservative academics.
If you're relying on academic knowledge to provide you a sense of reality, you're viewing reality through a lens that is biased to a 93% degree towards one political pole, and then receiving that knowledge through a media system which is biased to an 88% degree towards that same political pole.
Even if you, like me, generally believe that the liberal political position is correct, ideological conformity of this magnitude should frighten you.
> Even if you, like me, generally believe that the liberal political position is correct, ideological conformity of this magnitude should frighten you.
What it does is make people whose views fall out of that bubble feel disenfranchised. This is no small part of the Trump phenomenon.
I was watching a documentary about South American politics yesterday and there was a globalist establishment candidate running against one that was a protectionist populist. It was strange to see that the globalist was on the right and the protectionist was on the left and that is exactly the opposite of what we are seeing in the US election this year. After decades of people on the left lamenting that working class Republicans don't vote in their own interest the left is in a panic now because they are.
No one saw this coming and the media lock down is the reason why. When it's easy to smear anyone who does not take a globalist position as a racist that part of political discourse goes underground until it pops up in the voting booth.
This "seems" like an American phenomenon.
As a liberal, I can have a fully formed debate with a British Conservative, A Canadian conservative, a European conservative (sans latent Nazism), however the dominant American conservative seems to be operating on a completely different plain and set of assumptions. I find it extremely difficult to relate to and debate the American conservative. In general, if an american <insert institution here> (college, newspaper etc.) seems uber-liberal in America, it is just run-of-the-mill centrist in most other countries. Not because of any stated or unstated institutional biases, but simply because its been labelled so by a relentless, uncompromising, hyper-focussed and hugely disciplined conservative media looking for easy answers.
P.S: Also the predilection to openly say "Compromise is impossible", esp behind the scenes, also seems to be a unique attribute of the American Conservative.
The 2008 study did not find that "88% of journalists donate to the Democratic party."
It found that, of people who made a political donation and identified a journalism company as their employer, 88% donated to a Democratic candidate or cause.
It's not possible to take this study as evidence of an overall bias in journalism, because it is a very small, non-random sample of people. The total number of people included in the study is less than 1,500, and it was a self-selected group. In addition it includes non-journalist jobs like CFO and a "Saturday Night Live" producer.
About the only solid conclusion to draw from this study is that the vast majority of journalists do not contribute to political parties or candidates at all.
> Jonathan Haidt has shown[1] that non-economics social sciences skew more than 14-1 liberal to conservative (and that universities have not always been so skewed).
This seems to be measured by "Democrat" vs. "Republican". An alternative hypothesis is that mainstream American political views have skewed strongly towards the right in recent decades, but that shift did not touch the academy, and also that America became more prominent in research in recent decades (so more researchers labeled themselves by American political parties).
Anecdotally, it seems like there's a liberal/conservative split within the Democratic party, exemplified by Sanders/Hillary. I wonder what you get if you figure out some good way to quantify that, and then redo the statistics.
This is only frightening if you think that there's a lot of ideological conformity within the label "Democrat", or that the specific ideologies with the label "Republican" need representation. There are probably good arguments for those, but they're not completely obvious.
Completely agree. Though I think the issue here is bigger than that. Journalism by its nature is subjective. So it may be bias, and that's still crummy, but at least the people consuming it know what they're getting.
Facebook, on the other hand, portrays its "trending" news as being determined objectively based on what people are sharing. That goes beyond bias to manipulative. It would be the same if Google were filtering conservative news sites out of its results.
Liberal politics is mostly correct on social matters and dead wrong on economics. And, of course, the GOP is dead wrong on social matters and mostly correct on economics.
And that's what sucks for a lot of us, no party with a shot at winning and setting us on the correct path is mostly correct across the board.
I have a feeling we are standing at a crossroad where the only option is to go for the economy. Why? Because if we deteriorate further we can kiss goodby to social and environmental responsibility. Just look at any country that's in the shits economically for examples of how well social and environmental programs work when you are broke.
> I have no great love of conservative politics, but there's a convincing argument to be made that their ideas and views are routinely suppressed by media outside of explicitly partisan media outlets (i.e. Fox News or talk radio).
Fox News is not "explicitly partisan", they are purportedly neutral ("Fair and Balanced").
They are widely recognized as extraordinarily partisan, but that's different than "explicitly partisan".
What's bad is that it doesn't help reinforce your feeling that your position is correct when the other side is being actively suppressed. I generally agree with many liberal positions, but when I hear about stuff like this it makes me want to reconsider my opinions of conservative positions. It's exactly like the Streisand Effect.
This is a bit of a click-bait title, and is somewhat true -- but not in the way you think.
When FB was developing hashtags and content features, there was a concern that it is tough to find a middle-ground between 100% purely algorithmic generated content (i.e. leverage tastes data and supply articles suited to your interests) and 100% curated content (i.e. leverage tastes data, but only show articles from "reputable" sources and/or highly rated content, over shitty blog posts from amateurs.) The latter tends to do really well for engagement, as users can trust that the content they're seeing is reputable and popular. However the big concern that a number of us were raising was that tech companies have employees that are very biased in ways that they cannot control: they're younger, more liberal, and somewhat higher income, than the average FB user.
In my time there, I never heard of _explicit_ suppression of any viewpoints - with the exception of recent disagreements around the "Black Lives Matter" protests, the first time that I encountered a situation where disagreeing meant you were labelled a "racist" - but I can see why well-intentioned product and policy decisions led FB content down this hole.
Crazy, there was someone who just posted a rant against BLM in response to this s3r3nity's comment and it was deleted like two minutes ago. Does HN suffer from the same censorship that Facebook does?
The American two-party system is so weird. It tries to condense a complex matrix of sometimes-overlapping and fluid opinion scales -- socially conservative vs. socially liberal, globalist vs. protectionist, environmentalist vs. laissez-faire capitalist, and so on -- into one binary value. And somehow people have become convinced that not only is such a binary scale meaningful, but also the only available choice.
In many European democracies there's a functional multi-party system where parties appear and disappear over time to reflect voters' opinions. For example, there might be a protectionist right-wing party that's favored by farmers, and another one that supports free trade and listens to big business. Same happens on all the axes. Governments are formed as coalitions of these "SMB-sized" parties based on the votes. It's not "winner takes all", but rather "winners and not-so-bad-losers negotiate to find common ground".
What if the Republican and Democratic parties would break up into 6-10 new parties to better represent the actual opinions of the existing divisions within these parties?
Statistics like "88% of journalists are anti-conservative" show how difficult it's to say anything meaningful about a polarized political field. To look at it another way, that 12% is roughly the level of support that extreme right-wing political parties enjoy in Europe these days. Lumping 88% of European voters together as one party would be ridiculous because that party would contain both former communists and free-trade globalists.
Agreed, and to me, this is a direct result of media organizations' extreme biases in America. This seems to be the missing link. I don't know of many non-American hyper-conservative media organizations that have directly tied their profit motive to how virulently their viewers believe that POV and are WILDLY successful at it.
I hate how Silicon Valley culture makes it seem like they are all for freedom of information and how the big bad government is censoring and surveilling things from a bunch of innocent hackers (startup guys) when in reality if given the opportunity this crowd does the EXACT same thing. I have limited respect for either party
Tech companies are not immune to the negative side effects that come with large centralized institutions, even if it started in Silicon Valley. I don't believe we're ignorant to this fact.
We tend to rally against centralization and attempts to control information. Which is exactly why this is frontpage on HN.
FB has been consistently attacked for this type of stuff for years. That's a healthy sign of our community valuing freedom/markets/algorithms over the risks of handing over large amounts of power to a few humans. It seems even Facebook even values this approach as their own technology reaches parity with human curation:
> Several former curators said that as the trending news algorithm improved, there were fewer instances of stories being injected.
The issue is that FB advertises itself as "conduit" or "network connection". You log in, communicate with people and the site tools, FB runs ads on your eyeballs, etc.
Similar to how I give my electricity provider money, and they give me electricity.
Now FB clearly sees themselves as (let's be honest) a "power broker" or "rain maker". Not the same as "utility" or "network connection" or "conduit".
I, and most of my friends, are liberal minded. After The Guardian established a policy of (ironically) closing comments on their Comment Is Free section when the article relates to refugees or Muslims, I decided to include sites like Fox, Breitbart etc. into my daily feed. (I found the reflex to stifle debate deplorable and wanted to step outside the echo chamber).
Discussions with friends have become more interesting for sure as I reveal their biases.
From defending real violence over threats of violence, (Trump rallies and protests) to ignoring crime statistics, to just being woefully ignorant of what position the other side actually holds, it's incredible to see just how steadfast the Left can be in their ignorance.
Reading this must make China feel they made the right decision in banning Facebook. Not that they care about liberal v. conservative, but having their population manipulated by a cabal of Ivy Leaguers is a non-starter. The Chinese will run their own manipulation program, thank you very much.
Other governments may be starting to come to the same conclusion.
Some newspapers have well known left or right leanings. But its declared and out in the open. Most people thought Facebook news was organically trending. That's the difference here.
It has been blatantly clear something is up with their Trending algorithm when you notice there is a Trending: Hillary Clinton header on top of every single shared Bernie Sanders article. Never once have I seen a Trending: Bernie Sander header.
Given Facebook's influence and the sheer size of their userbase, the potential long-term implications of this particular kind of manipulation are... unsettling.
I suspect this is more a result of the media's heavy pro-Clinton bias rather than any overt attempt by Facebook. Remember that the mainstream media is ultimately the primary driver of these algorithms.
This seems like a story built specifically for a segment on Fox News where the newscasters feign shock and horror that their news topics aren't being covered by "mainstream media".
Of course trending news is curated. All hell would break loose otherwise.
There is no shortage of rabid political content conservative or otherwise on Facebook. A good part of the end user community would rather not deal with it.
An angry conservative who worked at Facebook was shocked and horrified when he was instructed to remove the breitbart 'story' about how Obama is actually a secret Muslim terrorist from Benghazi and is throwing a hissy fit all over the internet.
Not necessarily the case, but this is certainly my initial assessment of the situation without learning more.
1. I completely agree that the mainstream media in the U.S. (and in most parts of the world) is very biased and partisan.
2. I also agree that, as private companies, both Facebook and the mainstream media are in their complete right to proceed with their business as they see fit, within the legality of it anyway. I don't believe whatever it is that they do is a First Amendment (the rule forbidding the government from suppressing freedom of speech, assembly, etc) matter although it can be a freedom of speech (the natural right) matter.
With that out of the way the main reasoning of this post.
The great promise of the Internet in general and social media in particular is that, maybe for the first time in history, the natural rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly come together in this amazing technological manner and, at least in principle, without the need for authorization and without the interference of powerful third parties like the government or the elite.
People can exchange thoughts and ideas, coordinate, and interact instantaneously all across the globe without the need of long travel or intermediaries relaying those messages.
There was even an implicit promise, an unrealized one when, in many of the big public manifestations of the beginning of this decade the so called "Social Media Revolution" helped to magnify the voice of the people in the streets, to help them to coordinate outside the graps of their governments (that usually have full control of both the media and the old means of communication like landlines and mobile phones).
And these new companies (like FB, Twitter, Reddit to name a few) capitalized on that claim too, posting themselves as bastions of freedom of speech, the tools for people to change the world, one hashtag at a time.
Now, the damnedest thing: with each revelation like this one it becomes apparent that "the king is dead, long live the king".
These companies, far from providing the means for people to communicate, to freely exchange thoughts and ideas, they try to shape and mold these ideas just like the very tools the government and the oligarchy uses to control the people.
If it is real that Facebook does that (and there is no reason to doubt) that betrays the people a lot more than the examples you mention. I believe people, after all these centuries since the printing press (now synonymous with journalism) are used to the idea that it is biased, partisan and, in general unreliable.
But when it is their very words and thoughts that are being distorted, the ones from their friends, their neighbors, whose opinions and ideas can be amplified or muted at will depending on whether they conform or not to the gateway controllers agenda, that in my opinion is the ultimate betrayal by those companies.
Assuming this and many other suspicious about their behavior is true Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and the social media in general is betraying the people a lot worse than the mainstream media are.
I disagree - It's a private company's prerogative to display whatever content they wish - A competitor could choose to suppress liberal articles.
As long as they are not breaking any relevant speech laws, then I see nothing wrong with their actions. If we shut down all biased media, all we'd really be left with is the BBC (although a large number of people would disagree here)
The problem is, as a private company, should Facebook choose to manipulate it's news feed algorithm to promote one candidate or the other, or for whatever reason, this would be its prerogative under the First Amendment.
I personally choose to not use Facebook specifically for these reasons. Even though I know many Facebook employees personally, I don't trust it's employees to divorce their own interests and their powerful position as Facebook's curators.
Any democratic country depends on the quality of public discourse for the effectiveness of its political system, and for this reason many countries have special rules for newspapers and TV.
What's important here is that Facebook is not covered by those laws, simply because it did not exist when the laws were created. In my view it should be covered by those laws.
One defence Facebook might consider is to say that it simply reflects the preferences of its readers algorithmically. However, this article shows that is not the case, and that the company does exercise editorial judgement. Of course, the design of the algorithms is tacit editorialising anyway, so the whole point is moot to me.
While we are considering the fact that FB is a private company (actually a public company), some might be inclined to say that if users realise Facebook cannot be trusted, then they will leave the site causing its revenues to decrease. Other more honest and transparent competitors will take its place. However, in practise there are many reasons to think this won't happen, which is why we have special laws for the press in the first place.
> it's news feed algorithm to promote one candidate ... would be its prerogative under the First Amendment
As long such practices are declared.
People tend to look at "what's trending" in an effort to optimize/manipulate their content so that users would "trend" on it. The fact that FB was artificially eliminating stories gave false results to observers.
Another way of looking at this is if Nielson were to lower the rankings of shows it disagrees with and affecting the duration of those shows.
> “It was absolutely bias. We were doing it subjectively. It just depends on who the curator is and what time of day it is,” said the former curator.
> Other former curators interviewed by Gizmodo denied consciously suppressing conservative news, and we were unable to determine if left-wing news topics or sources were similarly suppressed. The conservative curator described the omissions as a function of his colleagues’ judgements; there is no evidence that Facebook management mandated or was even aware of any political bias at work.
It sounds like any issues were from curators who weren't being adequately supervised, instead of top-down orders from executives at Facebook.
This is different than what the current Hacker News headline suggests. Can we all collectively read the article and understand that the issue is different than our preconceptions lead us to believe?
From an extremely pure free-market conservative/capitalist approach, sure, there is nothing wrong with this, they can do what they want.
From a basic governmental regulation (Hayek) monopoly approach, FB is the incumbent and it will be extremely difficult for anyone else to gain a foothold here. Regulation ought to make it easier for others to approach the space. They are the single biggest voice in the news at this point, and whatever stances they support has an inestimable advantage in ways that far outstrip campaign finance contributions or lobbying. They may have to be governmentally disrupted to keep their power from becoming too great.
From a consumer labeling perspective, Facebook is profiting off improperly calling articles "trending" that are just their preferred way to view the world.
I just wonder if these articles go far enough to collapse any trust.
If this was a partisan media outlet like CNN, NBC/MSNBC, ABC, etc etc ad nauseam or FOX news (is there any other conservative network?), then yeah this would be expected.
The issue here is for the 'unsuspecting user' Facebook doesn't present itself as a partisan resource.
There's nothing 'wrong' with this per se as long as the user understands who they are dealing with, which articles like this one help in that respect.
I'd be interested to know a little bit more about how this relates to the news sites that are covering the story. Breitbart isn't much better than a tabloid--arguably worse, even. It's equivalent to leftwing sites like Alternet, which I also wouldn't expect Facebook to be comfortable linking to.
Keep in mind that this allegation is coming from a single conservative curator who no longer works there.
And even he seems pretty indecisive about it being an institutional bias: "I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz."
If Facebook is trying to suppress conservative news, they're doing a terrible job of it. I see far more Trump than I would like.
Apparently it's not coming from a single curator. The manipulation of the trending section was much wider spread than that:
"Several former Facebook “news curators,” as they were known internally, also told Gizmodo that they were instructed to artificially “inject” selected stories into the trending news module, even if they weren’t popular enough to warrant inclusion—or in some cases weren’t trending at all. The former curators, all of whom worked as contractors, also said they were directed not to include news about Facebook itself in the trending module."
The article then mentions a second curator that also admits anti-conservative bias:
"Another former curator agreed that the operation had an aversion to right-wing news sources. 'It was absolutely bias. We were doing it subjectively. It just depends on who the curator is and what time of day it is,' said the former curator."
> Keep in mind that this allegation is coming from a single conservative curator who no longer works there.
This is false, the headline even alludes to it being more than a single source. The entire article uses plural terms and refers to 'several.' I think you read the lede, but skipped the rest.
The more I hear about what Facebook has become, the less I like it.
Previously we heard that they run experiments to alter users news feeds to see if they could alter their mood, now we learn they're engaging in what is basically propaganda by suppressing certain viewpoints. And all this for what? So that you can be advertised to while you waste your time on the internet. What a terrible company. Speaks ill of humanity that it is so popular.
[+] [-] throwit992|10 years ago|reply
There are a number of studies that back up this claim. A 2008 study[0] found that 88% of journalists donate to the Democratic party. Jonathan Haidt has shown[1] that non-economics social sciences skew more than 14-1 liberal to conservative (and that universities have not always been so skewed).
For anyone who believes these statistics are not based on overt discrimination based on political viewpoint, a recent study[2] showed that discrimination by party is stronger than that of race. The study did so by reproducing a landmark study that demonstrated the existence of unconscious racial bias (the implicit association test), but instead using political indicators. They found that partisan political positions triggered implicit associations 50% stronger than that of racial biases. There is also a recent book called "Passing on the Right"[3] which provides some personal narratives of conservative academics.
If you're relying on academic knowledge to provide you a sense of reality, you're viewing reality through a lens that is biased to a 93% degree towards one political pole, and then receiving that knowledge through a media system which is biased to an 88% degree towards that same political pole.
Even if you, like me, generally believe that the liberal political position is correct, ideological conformity of this magnitude should frighten you.
[0] http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/130902
[1] http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/09/14/bbs-paper-on-lack-of-...
[2] https://pcl.stanford.edu/research/2015/iyengar-ajps-group-po...
[3] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/03/30/new-book-deta...
[+] [-] golemotron|10 years ago|reply
What it does is make people whose views fall out of that bubble feel disenfranchised. This is no small part of the Trump phenomenon.
I was watching a documentary about South American politics yesterday and there was a globalist establishment candidate running against one that was a protectionist populist. It was strange to see that the globalist was on the right and the protectionist was on the left and that is exactly the opposite of what we are seeing in the US election this year. After decades of people on the left lamenting that working class Republicans don't vote in their own interest the left is in a panic now because they are.
No one saw this coming and the media lock down is the reason why. When it's easy to smear anyone who does not take a globalist position as a racist that part of political discourse goes underground until it pops up in the voting booth.
[+] [-] pj_mukh|10 years ago|reply
P.S: Also the predilection to openly say "Compromise is impossible", esp behind the scenes, also seems to be a unique attribute of the American Conservative.
[+] [-] snowwrestler|10 years ago|reply
It found that, of people who made a political donation and identified a journalism company as their employer, 88% donated to a Democratic candidate or cause.
It's not possible to take this study as evidence of an overall bias in journalism, because it is a very small, non-random sample of people. The total number of people included in the study is less than 1,500, and it was a self-selected group. In addition it includes non-journalist jobs like CFO and a "Saturday Night Live" producer.
About the only solid conclusion to draw from this study is that the vast majority of journalists do not contribute to political parties or candidates at all.
[+] [-] geofft|10 years ago|reply
This seems to be measured by "Democrat" vs. "Republican". An alternative hypothesis is that mainstream American political views have skewed strongly towards the right in recent decades, but that shift did not touch the academy, and also that America became more prominent in research in recent decades (so more researchers labeled themselves by American political parties).
Anecdotally, it seems like there's a liberal/conservative split within the Democratic party, exemplified by Sanders/Hillary. I wonder what you get if you figure out some good way to quantify that, and then redo the statistics.
This is only frightening if you think that there's a lot of ideological conformity within the label "Democrat", or that the specific ideologies with the label "Republican" need representation. There are probably good arguments for those, but they're not completely obvious.
[+] [-] mgalka|10 years ago|reply
Facebook, on the other hand, portrays its "trending" news as being determined objectively based on what people are sharing. That goes beyond bias to manipulative. It would be the same if Google were filtering conservative news sites out of its results.
[+] [-] rebootthesystem|10 years ago|reply
Agree with everything you said up to this point.
Liberal politics is mostly correct on social matters and dead wrong on economics. And, of course, the GOP is dead wrong on social matters and mostly correct on economics.
And that's what sucks for a lot of us, no party with a shot at winning and setting us on the correct path is mostly correct across the board.
I have a feeling we are standing at a crossroad where the only option is to go for the economy. Why? Because if we deteriorate further we can kiss goodby to social and environmental responsibility. Just look at any country that's in the shits economically for examples of how well social and environmental programs work when you are broke.
Trump?
Barf.
Sadly.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|10 years ago|reply
Fox News is not "explicitly partisan", they are purportedly neutral ("Fair and Balanced").
They are widely recognized as extraordinarily partisan, but that's different than "explicitly partisan".
[+] [-] Grishnakh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NOSHSHNACKERS|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] s3r3nity|10 years ago|reply
This is a bit of a click-bait title, and is somewhat true -- but not in the way you think.
When FB was developing hashtags and content features, there was a concern that it is tough to find a middle-ground between 100% purely algorithmic generated content (i.e. leverage tastes data and supply articles suited to your interests) and 100% curated content (i.e. leverage tastes data, but only show articles from "reputable" sources and/or highly rated content, over shitty blog posts from amateurs.) The latter tends to do really well for engagement, as users can trust that the content they're seeing is reputable and popular. However the big concern that a number of us were raising was that tech companies have employees that are very biased in ways that they cannot control: they're younger, more liberal, and somewhat higher income, than the average FB user.
In my time there, I never heard of _explicit_ suppression of any viewpoints - with the exception of recent disagreements around the "Black Lives Matter" protests, the first time that I encountered a situation where disagreeing meant you were labelled a "racist" - but I can see why well-intentioned product and policy decisions led FB content down this hole.
[+] [-] marknutter|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavlov|10 years ago|reply
In many European democracies there's a functional multi-party system where parties appear and disappear over time to reflect voters' opinions. For example, there might be a protectionist right-wing party that's favored by farmers, and another one that supports free trade and listens to big business. Same happens on all the axes. Governments are formed as coalitions of these "SMB-sized" parties based on the votes. It's not "winner takes all", but rather "winners and not-so-bad-losers negotiate to find common ground".
What if the Republican and Democratic parties would break up into 6-10 new parties to better represent the actual opinions of the existing divisions within these parties?
Statistics like "88% of journalists are anti-conservative" show how difficult it's to say anything meaningful about a polarized political field. To look at it another way, that 12% is roughly the level of support that extreme right-wing political parties enjoy in Europe these days. Lumping 88% of European voters together as one party would be ridiculous because that party would contain both former communists and free-trade globalists.
[+] [-] pj_mukh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bunkydoo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmix|10 years ago|reply
We tend to rally against centralization and attempts to control information. Which is exactly why this is frontpage on HN.
FB has been consistently attacked for this type of stuff for years. That's a healthy sign of our community valuing freedom/markets/algorithms over the risks of handing over large amounts of power to a few humans. It seems even Facebook even values this approach as their own technology reaches parity with human curation:
> Several former curators said that as the trending news algorithm improved, there were fewer instances of stories being injected.
[+] [-] patrickg_zill|10 years ago|reply
Similar to how I give my electricity provider money, and they give me electricity.
Now FB clearly sees themselves as (let's be honest) a "power broker" or "rain maker". Not the same as "utility" or "network connection" or "conduit".
[+] [-] welanes|10 years ago|reply
Discussions with friends have become more interesting for sure as I reveal their biases.
From defending real violence over threats of violence, (Trump rallies and protests) to ignoring crime statistics, to just being woefully ignorant of what position the other side actually holds, it's incredible to see just how steadfast the Left can be in their ignorance.
[+] [-] jrehor|10 years ago|reply
Other governments may be starting to come to the same conclusion.
[+] [-] ape4|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kps|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nil_is_me|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fisherjeff|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morgante|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] basch|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gourou|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gratsby|10 years ago|reply
Of course trending news is curated. All hell would break loose otherwise.
There is no shortage of rabid political content conservative or otherwise on Facebook. A good part of the end user community would rather not deal with it.
[+] [-] wfo|10 years ago|reply
Not necessarily the case, but this is certainly my initial assessment of the situation without learning more.
[+] [-] luso_brazilian|10 years ago|reply
1. I completely agree that the mainstream media in the U.S. (and in most parts of the world) is very biased and partisan.
2. I also agree that, as private companies, both Facebook and the mainstream media are in their complete right to proceed with their business as they see fit, within the legality of it anyway. I don't believe whatever it is that they do is a First Amendment (the rule forbidding the government from suppressing freedom of speech, assembly, etc) matter although it can be a freedom of speech (the natural right) matter.
With that out of the way the main reasoning of this post.
The great promise of the Internet in general and social media in particular is that, maybe for the first time in history, the natural rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly come together in this amazing technological manner and, at least in principle, without the need for authorization and without the interference of powerful third parties like the government or the elite.
People can exchange thoughts and ideas, coordinate, and interact instantaneously all across the globe without the need of long travel or intermediaries relaying those messages.
There was even an implicit promise, an unrealized one when, in many of the big public manifestations of the beginning of this decade the so called "Social Media Revolution" helped to magnify the voice of the people in the streets, to help them to coordinate outside the graps of their governments (that usually have full control of both the media and the old means of communication like landlines and mobile phones).
And these new companies (like FB, Twitter, Reddit to name a few) capitalized on that claim too, posting themselves as bastions of freedom of speech, the tools for people to change the world, one hashtag at a time.
Now, the damnedest thing: with each revelation like this one it becomes apparent that "the king is dead, long live the king".
These companies, far from providing the means for people to communicate, to freely exchange thoughts and ideas, they try to shape and mold these ideas just like the very tools the government and the oligarchy uses to control the people.
If it is real that Facebook does that (and there is no reason to doubt) that betrays the people a lot more than the examples you mention. I believe people, after all these centuries since the printing press (now synonymous with journalism) are used to the idea that it is biased, partisan and, in general unreliable.
But when it is their very words and thoughts that are being distorted, the ones from their friends, their neighbors, whose opinions and ideas can be amplified or muted at will depending on whether they conform or not to the gateway controllers agenda, that in my opinion is the ultimate betrayal by those companies.
Assuming this and many other suspicious about their behavior is true Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and the social media in general is betraying the people a lot worse than the mainstream media are.
[1] The Social Media Revolution: Exploring the Impact on Journalism and News Media Organizations [2010]: http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/202/the-social-media-re....
[2] If You Doubt That Social Media Has Changed The World, Take A Look At Ukraine [2014]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2014/01/18/if-you-dou....
[3] Welcome to the social media revolution [2012]: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-18013662
(recycling this post made to the duplicated thread, but still appropriate to this one)
[+] [-] kaendfinger|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BaryonBundle|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elthran|10 years ago|reply
As long as they are not breaking any relevant speech laws, then I see nothing wrong with their actions. If we shut down all biased media, all we'd really be left with is the BBC (although a large number of people would disagree here)
[+] [-] exabrial|10 years ago|reply
If your cause is just, isn't a non-violent protest enough? Speaking about it, voting with your dollar, etc?
1) http://gizmodo.com/okcupid-tells-users-not-to-use-firefox-be...
2)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy
[+] [-] notliketherest|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimmytidey|10 years ago|reply
What's important here is that Facebook is not covered by those laws, simply because it did not exist when the laws were created. In my view it should be covered by those laws.
One defence Facebook might consider is to say that it simply reflects the preferences of its readers algorithmically. However, this article shows that is not the case, and that the company does exercise editorial judgement. Of course, the design of the algorithms is tacit editorialising anyway, so the whole point is moot to me.
While we are considering the fact that FB is a private company (actually a public company), some might be inclined to say that if users realise Facebook cannot be trusted, then they will leave the site causing its revenues to decrease. Other more honest and transparent competitors will take its place. However, in practise there are many reasons to think this won't happen, which is why we have special laws for the press in the first place.
[+] [-] nashashmi|10 years ago|reply
As long such practices are declared.
People tend to look at "what's trending" in an effort to optimize/manipulate their content so that users would "trend" on it. The fact that FB was artificially eliminating stories gave false results to observers.
Another way of looking at this is if Nielson were to lower the rankings of shows it disagrees with and affecting the duration of those shows.
[+] [-] lazzlazzlazz|10 years ago|reply
> Other former curators interviewed by Gizmodo denied consciously suppressing conservative news, and we were unable to determine if left-wing news topics or sources were similarly suppressed. The conservative curator described the omissions as a function of his colleagues’ judgements; there is no evidence that Facebook management mandated or was even aware of any political bias at work.
It sounds like any issues were from curators who weren't being adequately supervised, instead of top-down orders from executives at Facebook.
This is different than what the current Hacker News headline suggests. Can we all collectively read the article and understand that the issue is different than our preconceptions lead us to believe?
[+] [-] carsongross|10 years ago|reply
I want a collapse in trust in the major social networks. This is the internet we are talking about. Let them suppress, and let them see what happens.
[+] [-] brokentone|10 years ago|reply
From a basic governmental regulation (Hayek) monopoly approach, FB is the incumbent and it will be extremely difficult for anyone else to gain a foothold here. Regulation ought to make it easier for others to approach the space. They are the single biggest voice in the news at this point, and whatever stances they support has an inestimable advantage in ways that far outstrip campaign finance contributions or lobbying. They may have to be governmentally disrupted to keep their power from becoming too great.
From a consumer labeling perspective, Facebook is profiting off improperly calling articles "trending" that are just their preferred way to view the world.
I just wonder if these articles go far enough to collapse any trust.
[+] [-] ChemicalWarfare|10 years ago|reply
The issue here is for the 'unsuspecting user' Facebook doesn't present itself as a partisan resource. There's nothing 'wrong' with this per se as long as the user understands who they are dealing with, which articles like this one help in that respect.
[+] [-] reitanqild|10 years ago|reply
As long as it gets out you mean?
[+] [-] maldusiecle|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morgante|10 years ago|reply
And even he seems pretty indecisive about it being an institutional bias: "I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz."
If Facebook is trying to suppress conservative news, they're doing a terrible job of it. I see far more Trump than I would like.
[+] [-] adventured|10 years ago|reply
"Several former Facebook “news curators,” as they were known internally, also told Gizmodo that they were instructed to artificially “inject” selected stories into the trending news module, even if they weren’t popular enough to warrant inclusion—or in some cases weren’t trending at all. The former curators, all of whom worked as contractors, also said they were directed not to include news about Facebook itself in the trending module."
The article then mentions a second curator that also admits anti-conservative bias:
"Another former curator agreed that the operation had an aversion to right-wing news sources. 'It was absolutely bias. We were doing it subjectively. It just depends on who the curator is and what time of day it is,' said the former curator."
[+] [-] partiallypro|10 years ago|reply
This is false, the headline even alludes to it being more than a single source. The entire article uses plural terms and refers to 'several.' I think you read the lede, but skipped the rest.
[+] [-] littletimmy|10 years ago|reply
Previously we heard that they run experiments to alter users news feeds to see if they could alter their mood, now we learn they're engaging in what is basically propaganda by suppressing certain viewpoints. And all this for what? So that you can be advertised to while you waste your time on the internet. What a terrible company. Speaks ill of humanity that it is so popular.
[+] [-] throwaway2016a|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ben336|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duaneb|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dba7dba|10 years ago|reply