Former Facebook workers allegedly said that the social network is routinely suppressing news stories that appeal to conservatives. They seemed to state that Facebook does not only rely on algorithms but manipulates the social networks trending topics for political purposes.
One more time in case you missed it, my thoughts on Facebook and the news: https://t.co/u53UWYoScY
— Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) May 11, 2016
Conservative Contents Filtered Out
Former Facebook "news curators," as they were internally called, admitted to Gizmodo that they were tasked to filter stories that will appear on the trending news module. Conservative news that are trending fail to appear on the highly-influential section.
Some of these stories are injected even though they are not trending enough to be included in the section. These former news curators added that they were also instructed not to include Facebook itself in the trending module.
NPR said that among the topics that Facebook suppressed were former IRS official Lois Lerner, accused by Republicans of inappropriately scrutinizing conservative groups; Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker; Drudge Report, a popular conservative news aggregator; Chris Kyle, a former Navy SEAL who murdered in 2013 and lastly, Steven Crowder, former Fox News Contributor.
"Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending," said the former curator. "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."
Facebook Answers Allegations
In rebuttal, Tom Stocky from Facebook's trending topics managing team denied allegations about filtering conservative contents, Wall Street Journal reported. On a post on Monday, the Facebook executive in charge of the feature said that the trending list is automatically generated based on the discussions around the social media. However, Stocky admitted that humans do curate the list but just to remove duplicates, makes sure the stories are legit and other junk.
He also emphasized that Facebook found no evidence that the allegations are true. The report from Gizmodo sparked criticisms, especially from Republicans. In fact, Senate Commerce Committee sent a letter to Facebook asking for more information on the issue.
Facebook Should Be Transparent
"At the core, this controversy is really about Facebook's gatekeeping powers," said Jason Turcotte, assistant professor of communication at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. According to media scholars, the human editors may inject biases that are both done consciously or unconsciously.
There's an urgent all for Facebook to be responsible and transparent in their gatekeeping process as well as newsmaking decisions. However, Turcotte believed that the social media can maintain a free flow of ideas and perspectives without putting fair journalism in jeopardy.
What's your stand on this issue? Do you think Facebook is biased? Let us know with your comments below.
