Facebook, has been reported to be “routinely suppress(ing) news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s... ‘trending’ news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project.”

In a blog post, Facebook's VP of Search Tim Stocky mentions, "We have in place strict guidelines for our trending topic reviewers as they audit topics surfaced algorithmically..."

“Facebook’s news section operates like a traditional newsroom, reflecting the biases of its workers and the... imperatives of the corporation,” says Michael Nunez of Gizmodo.

Facebook, a corporation? We thought it was a site.

Ho-hum. Another day, another farce. Why are we mentioning this at all?

It’s because Facebook has become an influential corporation just like Microsoft back in the day — and they’re abusing their influence. We know this from earlier incidents, but directing trending news in your direction is altogether different. It’s power-play of the worst sort.

You see the difference. Google censors some videos. They get complaints, so they remove them. They get DMCA notices, and they inform the uploaders — and then remove them. In my book, Google doesn’t do a disservice to the world.

Facebook does. You know why? Because young people are hooked for life, and that’s the future. Search may come and search may go, but FB goes on forever.

In a blog post, Facebook's VP of Search Tim Stocky says: "We take these reports extremely seriously, and have found no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true.

Facebook is a platform for people and perspectives from across the political spectrum. There are rigorous guidelines in place for the review team to ensure consistency and neutrality. These guidelines do not permit the suppression of political perspectives. Nor do they permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over another. These guidelines do not prohibit any news outlet from appearing in Trending Topics...

...We have in place strict guidelines for our trending topic reviewers as they audit topics surfaced algorithmically: reviewers are required to accept topics that reflect real world events, and are instructed to disregard junk or duplicate topics, hoaxes, or subjects with insufficient sources.

Facebook does not allow or advise our reviewers to systematically discriminate against sources of any ideological origin and we’ve designed our tools to make that technically not feasible. At the same time, our reviewers’ actions are logged and reviewed, and violating our guidelines is a fireable offense.

There have been other anonymous allegations — for instance that we artificially forced ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter to trend. We looked into that charge and found that it is untrue. We do not insert stories artificially into trending topics, and do not instruct our reviewers to do so. Our guidelines do permit reviewers to take steps to make topics more coherent, such as combining related topics into a single event (such as ‪#‎starwars and ‪#‎maythefourthbewithyou), to deliver a more integrated experience.

Our review guidelines for Trending Topics are under constant review, and we will continue to look for improvements. We will also keep looking into any questions about Trending Topics to ensure that people are matched with the stories that are predicted to be the most interesting to them, and to be sure that our methods are as neutral and effective as possible."

Tags : Facebook