Facebook is once again in the spotlight, this time for allegedly suppressing news stories supporting conservative political viewpoints, which the top tech company fully denies.
According to Gizmodo, five former members of FB’s trending news team – known internally as “news curators” – claimed that they had purposefully blocked some conservative media outlets from appearing in the trending section.
“Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending,” the former curator told Gizmodo. “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.”
The whistleblowers also claimed that some of the conservative outlets that were popular enough to be picked up by FB’s algorithm in the trending sections would be excluded unless more ‘mainstream’ outlets were covering the same story.
However, some of the “curators” denied these allegations, noting that there is “no evidence that Facebook management mandated or was even aware of any political bias at work.”
FB’s VP of search, Tom Stocky, echoed this with his statement that FB’s management has “found no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true".
The Gizmodo article didn’t stop there. Apparently, FB editors were also artificially “injecting” stories into the trending section even if they weren’t popular enough to make the cut.
“We have in place strict guidelines for our trending topic reviewers as they audit topics surfaced algorithmically," was Stocky’s response to these allegations. "We do not insert stories artificially into trending topics, and do not instruct our reviewers to do so."
What’s the public saying?
Aside from fueling right-wing persecution, this is a key reminder of dangers of Silicon Valley controlling content https://t.co/BCromK3Wvu
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 9, 2016
Conservative media downplayed on Facebook? What else is new, says conservative media https://t.co/TrrgTgztrG
— James Walterman (@WaltermanJames) May 9, 2016
Facebook Must Own Up to Being an Increasingly Powerful Media Outlet | by @mathewi https://t.co/KVaEkxnWzw
— Entrepreneur (@Entrepreneur) May 10, 2016
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