Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
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...
what constitutes "fair?" if one group is twice as loud while delivering the same amount of content, is it unfair to turn their volume down by half?
how about something like snopes or myth debunking? does dr oz deserve equal placement to more credible nutrition science? what is worse, attempting to surface more legitimate sources, or letting your site turn into a free for all shouting match?
for anyone downvoting me because they think I approve of censorship if my side wins: quite the contrary. I think from a purely theoretical standpoint, signal to noise is a complicated problem, and the people who reject the idea of filtering or ranking in totality are being unrealistic. allowing the loudest speakers to unabatedly monopolize collective attention is a problem.
To have some kind of filtering or curation, you necessarily have to put some people into a position of power where they have the ability to censor this noise. On a forum where it's explicitly known that such "moderators" are present, and even better if their biases are known, this is perfectly fine. If I'm on a science-oriented discussion forum and it's advertised that the moderators of this forum will ban anyone who attempts to spread pseudoscience or anti-science religious junk, that'll help attract me because I don't want waste my time looking at that crap.
There's also forums where there's very little such curation, and instead community moderation is mostly relied on: users are given moderation points to boost or suppress other posts. That's fine too: you know going in what the deal is, so you just have to see if you mesh with the other members or not.
However, if a forum claims to be "open" and "inclusive" but then censors people, that's just hypocritical and wrong. If you're going to push a bias, then you have to at least inform users of this.
As it relates to Facebook, which is supposed to be for everyone and not just people of a certain political persuasion, they shouldn't be censoring anything unless they're going to make this known up-front (which they haven't). "Trending topics" should be anything that's highly popular. If some completely wrong and debunked BS is the most popular new story among your site's users, then you need to show that at the top, or else you're not serving your users. If you don't like that, then you either need to inform them of how you're going to censor and slant things, or you need to get rid of users you don't like. Or maybe just get rid of the "trending topics" section, and replace it with something more fine-tuned so that one group of users doesn't get annoyed at seeing junk they disagree with that another group of users really likes.
The simple fact is that you can't please everyone. If you try, you're going to fail. Sites like Reddit avoid this by having tons of different sub-forums, each with their own rules and moderators. Some far-right conservative wackos can co-exist with far-left liberals there because they're on separate subreddits.
I just dont think the trending stories ever made an emphatic claim to be open and inclusive, nor is promoting some stories artificially the equivalent to "censorship." Not allowing stories in the timeline is completely different than manually choosing the trending stories for a day.
Facebook has always been pro censorship. No nipples, no porn. I dont think of facebook as a place for free speech, and I never felt as if the trending stories was some organic popular list. I know everything on facebook is specifically chosen to get ME to click.
That said, watching the watchers is easy if sites publish transparency reports and publish "stories we didnt cover." Problem solved.
As for porn, if the site clearly states that that's something they censor, that's fine. Lots of sites do that. But yes, the whole name "trending stories" absolutely does imply an "organic popular list". If you "know" that this isn't really what it is, that's great for your insight, but it's still lying on the part of Facebook.
especially on facebook. each person's trending stories could be different and be presented based on what it thinks is popular AND applicable to you. all i see is "here is a subsample of some of our most popular stories." do you and your friends have the same trending stories at the same time? cuz i get regional stories. im sure my friends in other regions dont get those stories. it is quite obviously targeting me based on something besides a global trending list.
nothing on facebook is ever organic. and ive never seen facebook claim anything was.
I would agree that this is a fair assumption to make about how it should work.
>cuz i get regional stories. im sure my friends in other regions dont get those stories.
Yes, that's no different than Google News. That's an entirely fair thing to do: tailor a person's feed for their preferences and locality.
>it is quite obviously targeting me based on something besides a global trending list.
Yes, and as long as it's unbiased, there's no problem with that. Especially if users can configure it (maybe I'd really like to see local news items from my hometown, for instance).
However, if they're intentionally omitting news feed items because they don't like them, that's wrong. Omitting news feed items from your feed because you don't live in Laramie, Wyoming and these items are only of interest to locals there is one thing; omitting items because they're of interest to a political group that you don't care for is entirely another.
just because a group of people start shouting about something loudly, and the shouting gets popular, doesnt mean facebook should choose to amplify it.
for example, think of mean girls. when gretchen is trying to make fetch happen, and regina says "Gretchen, stop trying to make fetch happen! It's not going to happen!" A group of likeminded people, say republicans in this example, could be trying to make someone appear popular by shouting their name a lot, ad nauseum. that doesnt make it newsworthy outside the echo chamber.
if the republican network is more coordinated and better at discussing one topic at at time than the democrats, they can push a story higher on the trending list. people being able to manipulate the trending list through coordination isnt ideal. if you want a gamified, competitive trending list, visit twitter. letting pure popularity and activity overrule common sense is foolhearted. i have never seen facebook claim their trending list behaved like twitter (which is where it seems you are getting your ideal trending behavior concept from.)
using humans to balance the trending stories, instead of letting one ideology take it over, is a good thing. but balance doesnt always mean fair or equal. myths dont deserve equal space to debunking. intelligent design doesnt automatically deserve equal placement to more accredited theories. if something is factually wrong, facebook can remove a story from trending to prevent its spread.
plus, algorithms are going to display some kind of bias. any sort of spam filter will disfavor certain noise. is blocking viagra ads bias? algorithms written by people will lean in SOME direction. believing in unbias is naive.
Yes, if Facebook users shout about something loudly and it gets popular, FB has no right to squelch that just because they disagree with it. That's censorship.
If Democrat voters don't like the Republican-aimed news, FB can and should make sure their news feeds are tailored for users so that people don't see stuff from sources they think are junk and so their feeds are more tailored for them and their preferences. I have no problem with that. That's how Google News works; I can tell it to not show me news from crappy sites like Breitbart or WND. But it doesn't censor those sources against my will; if for some crazy reason I really liked those site, I could tell GN to show them to me, and I can set my preference for those sites to a higher factor. The whole key here is user choice: having some fedora-wearing hipster at Facebook telling me what I should and shouldn't be reading is asinine and condescending. Having the ability to configure my news feeds to show me what I want, and hide things I think are garbage, is absolutely correct however.
Also, political avocation is marketing and can be spam. Unsolicited "Vote for Ted" emails are spam in my book.
While I agree that ideological conformity is a problem, I think it's a symptom rather than something that needs to be fixed itself at the moment. You would probably see more distributed alignment within certain communities if there wasn't so much "noise" elsewhere.
What biased information am I acting on exactly?
From the story:
> Stories covered by conservative outlets (like Breitbart, Washington Examiner, and Newsmax) that were trending enough to be picked up by Facebook’s algorithm were excluded unless mainstream sites like the New York Times, the BBC, and CNN covered the same stories.
That doesn't seem too terrible to me. If something from a untrustworthy source known for political agitprop is trending, I wouldn't mind Facebook waiting to see if the mainstream press picks up on it.
If they were letting through stories from places like AlterNet through that would show bias, but being generally cautious with biased sites that have low journalistic standards isn't the worst thing in the world.
The point was understood, but differently than you intended.
These terms seem to be used to reference the folks that would claim to hold the conservative viewpoint, but the terms themselves only further evidence the misunderstood viewpoint non-conservatives may have of conservatives, and that misunderstanding may have been furthered by what is discussed in the article.
Here's an explanation of the study:
>One other point that I find really interesting and important about Haidt’s work is his findings on the ability of different groups to empathize across these ideological divides. So in his book (p. 287) Haidt reports on the following experiment: after determining whether someone is liberal or conservative, he then has each person answer the standard battery of questions as if he were the opposite ideology. So, he would ask a liberal to answer the questions as if he were a “typical conservative” and vice-versa. What he finds is quite striking: “The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who describe themselves as ‘very liberal.’ The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives.” In other words, moderates and conservatives can understand the liberal worldview and liberals are unable to relate to the conservative worldview, especially when it comes to questions of care and fairness.
From: http://volokh.com/2014/01/17/jonathan-haidt-psychology-polit...
I was taught to be able to argue the other sides opinion as well because then you truly understand what you believe.
Then why do only liberals have a problem understanding it? Why are moderates and conservatives able to understand without difficulty? Are they not "lay person"s?
EDIT: To add a little more substance. I think the incoherence stems from the fact that the current conservative alliance is formed from approximately 3 distinct groups, with different priorities. You have the religious folks who care about abortion, same-sex marriage, drug laws, etc... And then you have the blue collar group that cares more about immigration, guns, etc.. And then you have the pro-business group which mostly cares about taxes and deregulation. From the outside looking in, it shouldn't be surprising that it's hard to empathize with the 'conservative' world view, because the external manifestations of that worldview are often very contradictory (i.e. why would a group that supports small-government also support the drug war, etc...)
[edit after the edit - please don't edit after someone has already replied - it makes the replier look bad]
From the outside, Democrats can be viewed as a bunch of special interests under one tent. I find much of these "group slicing" to be problematic when talking about the GOP as I don't think its really those groups or the ultimate belief is what is reported. Viewing a group through another group's lens is fraught with peril.
I see many of the same aspects of incoherence among Democrats and you don't exactly have to look for it in the hidden trenches of the Democratic party. I certainly don't think Sen. Feinstein's views on encryption are in line with those of an open progressive society.
I see the same hypocrisy in Democrats' views on gun control, and specifically the prohibition against convicted felons exercising their constitutional right to bear arms.
I'm generally of the opinion that the criminal justice system in the US is fundamentally broken and institutionally racist/discriminatory. Going by that premise, and seeing the specific hurdles that poor people, and specifically poor black men, face in terms of selective enforcement, likelihood of being offered pretrial plea bargains, chances of conviction, and length of sentencing, I find it hard to view any laws that hope to strip citizens of their rights based on a tainted justice system as anything other than racist. And yet, these laws are broadly supported by both Democrats and Republicans.
An electoral system that can naturally support only two substantially competitive parties guarantees that parties that cannot maintain incoherence will also not be major parties. While the electoral system empirically does reduce the significant axes of variation of political vies in the population [1], it doesn't reduce it so far as to actually fit on the one-dimensional axis implied by a two-party system. So the major parties must be incoherent to be competitive.
[1] See, Arendt Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy for research on this.
Kind of odd -- everyone immediately jumps down parent's throat, but it's not like tax cuts for 'job creators' and universal health care as 'death panels' aren't actual factual conservative talking points, part of an easily verifiable historical record (I'll concede the "attacks on regulations and consumer/environmental protections marketed as 'making government more efficient'"). I presume those that speak those views are No True Conservatives?
Actually (without getting into methodological issues and whether he has actually shown anything), the conclusion would be more accurately stated as that liberal are unable to accurately predict the manner in which conservatives would prefer to express their worldview, whereas the reverse is not true.
I think that, to the extent this is accurate at all (and this type of research on broadly characterizing liberals and conservatives, from either side, is fraught with opportunities -- often realized -- to take broad fuzzy terms and operationalize them in ways which reinforces researchers' own ideological biases), what it really reflects is the fact that liberals in-group language is the same as the common language of the broader society and, particularly, entertainment media (to which, then, moderates and conservatives are still heavily exposed), whereas conservatives in-group language is something to which liberals are far less exposed (mainly propagated through conservative churches and similar institutions).
(This is also feeds -- though its not the sole source of -- the liberal view of conservative dishonesty, in that the main context in which liberals encounter conservative in-group language is in conservative advocacy of public policy positions, where the language used to articulate conservative values is used in a way which clashes with liberals expected use of language, and seems dishonest when it comes to values.)
There comes a time where experience and evidence will just not go your way, no matter how many what-ifs and "if you would just listen"'s you throw at opposing parties. You cannot add credibility to your position based on unknowns and chance.
Making sure there is an artificial level playing ground between two sides is pointless. I don't believe this is a case of people stifling view points, but rather the view point in question just not holding any merit.
Equating that to censorship is silly. Furthermore utilizing questionable sources to further a point isn't going to help your view point either.
I'm sure at the time, the Church were confident they were right about the matter and therefore had no qualms in suppressing Galileo's claims.
Freedom of information and opinion is what drives progress. Should conservative opinions be wrong, then there is no fear in giving them a platform - they can be publicly debunked, to the downfall of their message.
Given that they are feared, suggests that the jury is still out on whether their opinions are categorically wrong, or even whether the opposing opinion is categorically right. In this case, it will be free discussion which will enable us as a society to converge on the correct path.
Spot on.
No one is stopping people from having these opinions, speaking about them, or teaching those perspectives. Claiming that this is a cause of freedom of information and somehow making this analogous to Galileo (it's not, not even in the slightest) is absurdly silly.
If you are looking to defend rational discourse and freedom of thought, well, you're not doing that -- leveling out everything on a no-questions-asked baseline is ignorant and becomes borderline satire of unbiased rational thought at that point.
You may not have been paying attention, but unfortunately that's not the case.
https://www.thefire.org/list-of-campus-disinvitations-2000-2...
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/whats-new-about...
http://www.mediaite.com/online/university-president-shuts-do...
And I can link to many more examples if you wish. It's moved from "your opinion is incorrect but I respect your right to speak it" to "I don't agree with what you say so I'm denying your right to express it".
Now do you understand the problem? It's quite incredible, actually.
Please do provide more examples.
thefire.org - An org dedicated to freedom of speech on campus, founded by University of Pennsylvania professor Alan Charles Kors and Boston civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate.
Spiked - a 15 year old UK publication with staff from the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.
Mediaite - a popular and left-leaning online news source that aggregates mainstream news sources.
Come off it. A browse through the links above are ample for anyone concerned about the truth.
You linked to "credible" sources, with some weird standard of credibility which I'm not even sure you believe yourself.
Censorship of any kind is inherently dangerous and detrimental to true progress. Aren't equality, open-mindedness, and freedom of expression paramount to liberal thought? Do you not see the hypocrisy here?
But shouldn't none of this matter? If we're right, should we really need to silence our opponents? If our ideas are fundamentally right, then they should win in a fair and open marketplace of ideas, without the unfair advantage of censorship.
The very fact that you want (or feel the need) to silence your opponent sheds a light on the quality and legitimacy of your ideas. I say this as someone who has always been classically liberal; we have abandoned our true ideals (the ideals which have usually placed us on the right side of history) for radicalism and new forms of bigotry and inequality. The Overton Window has radically shifted and those that were previously on the left are now falling closer to the center-right.
We are a polarized nation and this is reflected in the atrocious line-up of presidential candidates that we have right now.
Whether your statement is based on disingenuous confusion or simple ignorance doesn't matter at this point because you've made your own post largely irrelevant and quite frankly it ticked me off a little bit that this string of non-sense keeps getting repeated as if it's some defense of rational, critical thought when it's the furthest thing from it at the moment.
All positions and view points cannot get equal play time in the larger conversation -- it would be noisy and a waste of time and ultimately be detrimental to progress. That is not censorship.
Your personal attacks on me are actually proving my point. In your original post, you said:
"In the specific case of conservative politics, why does it matter that it's so skewed? I have absolutely no issue with, in this specific case, conservative politics not receiving much attention."
That's a form of censorship and manipulation, especially because Facebook is not seen as an editorialized news source, but rather as a representation of one's community. You seem to think it isn't censorship though:
"I am not sure how you are confusing me and facebook's curation system not giving attention to certain sources and positions based on their credibility and integrity with actively preventing people from speaking."
This had nothing to do with credibility or integrity. It was a group of people with a very specific political ideology that were subjectively picking news and having it appear in an organic feed, when it was really editorialized.
I'm not confusing you with Facebook's curation system. You're entitled to your opinion. I'm telling you why your opinion shouldn't be applied at scale (in this case, to a system that appears organic) and also why you should care about this not just for this one incident, but for the implications that this has on a larger scale.
So you don't care about conservative views getting silenced here. After all, conservatives are wrong, right? But what if the major media outlet changes it's mind and starts to think liberals are wrong, and thus silences liberal content? How will you feel then? This isn't about political ideologies. It's about the implications of an unprecedentedly large and trusted media outlet taking sides and deliberately influencing it's audience. Liberal or conservative, that's dangerous.
I am not sure if you actually read what happened, but this was a case of certain sources being "ignored" because they are borderline tabloids that often push stories that aren't even remotely true. Waiting for another source to pick up the story and then publish it, isn't censorship. It's reasonable.
For this to be censorship based on a specific political ideology following along one side of the spectrum, you'd have to have an example where they let through other sources that are also tabloid-esque but happen to fall along within their opinions and views.
Did the standard for their sources remain relatively constant regardless of the material being discussed? There isn't a clear answer here, but that doesn't make it defacto censorship of one set of particular political opinions. The sources that were discussed aren't credible in any meaningful form. The fact that they happen to be largely conservative seems like a problem conservatives should address instead of calling it censorship.
A good number of posters in this thread seem fine with not bothering to really think of ways that the presented scenario doesn't hold up and completely accept what was stated is what was actually happening. It's a characteristically low standard of evidence and it just so happens that some of you have made it very clear that such a scenario also happens to align with your opinions. It's fantastically hypocritical.
>So you don't care about conservative views getting silenced here.
I am only going to clarify this once more and then I am no longer going to respond to you. I am not encouraging, advocating, enabling silencing of views here. I said I am okay such view points not getting a larger platform or attention, because it's a waste of time. Note that this is not the same as silencing, preventing discussion, outlawing, etc, etc. However, pretending that discussing all view points without considering whether they hold merit or not is somehow a path to better national dialogue is simply unfounded and doesn't make any sense. But that's my opinion, and really wasn't even what happened in the case above. That specific opinion of mine was brought up in response to someone claiming that we should defacto just give everything an equal voice in the national dialogue and somehow not doing so is censorship that will derail rational discourse on a national scale.
>But what if the major media outlet changes it's mind and starts to think liberals are wrong
You seem to misunderstand why this is happening. It's not a matter of opinions swaying. The sources discussed in the article have little to no credibility. The fact that they are all conservative is a problem conservatives might want to address.
Conservatives are now the minority of this country, but due to bad districting, they have disproportionate electoral power.
And you know, it's not like the GOP needed to be enemies with the scientific community, but that's how they've positioned themselves. The conservative narrative is: scientists lie about global warming, fracking, coal, and other ecological points. Scientists lie about homosexuality. Scientists lie about the efficacy of abstinence, and they lie about condoms.
I think conservatives have been toyed with the GOP repeatedly, and I think it's no coincidence that the GOP is having a crisis, and I think it's both surprising and unsurprising that Donald Trump barely plays the Christian card. The top and only Christian consensus issues are (1) abortion, (2) homosexuality, and (3) sex education in schools. Distracting issues.
My point is not that Democrats or the GOP have social issues as part of get-out-to-vote drives. My point is to look at the content of the GOP points, whether on scientific policy or social issues.
In my opinion Trump is not about 2016, but we will likely have a President in 2028 who runs on the Trump agenda of Native Populism, in a world of automation and globalization, his message is only going to get popular.
Who cares if journalists donate to the Democratic party? Does that mean that they are omitting information or lying? If they are, show evidence of that, not that they donated to a particular party.
Conservative sources like those mentioned in the article have been repeatedly shown to distort the truth or even outright lie when the facts don't fit their agenda. Facebook is right to omit them because they are not reliable sources of information.
The idea that we even need to know if something is "trending" is ridiculous to begin with. How many times has a celebrity been declared dead on Facebook only to find out that it was a hoax? How many times have we been told we have to declare our copyright in a Facebook status or Mark Zuckerburg will personally steal all our photos to reprint for profit? The fact that a bunch of people are sharing something is practically useless in determining whether it is a valuable or true piece of information.
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.
Palin, for example may have had similar opinions but was not charismatic. Trump on the other hand sounds like your regular blue collar worker --I've known black as well as white blue collar workers and they speak just like that. When they make a mistake, they don't try to explain it away like a Clinton or a Bush. Nah, they just come out and say, yeah, I was probably wrong and this is why and offer some plausible support for the argument. Also, I think lots of working class people have felt funny about politicians tiptoeing around issues rather than just being a bit "vulgar" about things and that appeals to some people. If you ever listen to how people who take buses to the poorer areas of town talk, just sit at one of those stops long enough you'll know what I mean. They are unfiltered and speak as they feel without any affected tiptoeing.
This irritates me with corporate management types too, trying to tell you what to do without telling you, and therefore avoiding responsibility for their guidance.
I'll have to think about this more, thanks again!
Realistically, the terms "left" and "right" don't mean a damn thing in modern politics, at least not in the US. There's not really a cohesive ideology that you can say is "the left ideology", or one you can call "the right ideology". Both labels are, at times, attached to a smorgasbord of ideas, some related, some unrelated, and probably some that are diametrically opposed to each other.
Mostly those words exist simply as pejoratives now.
And to the extent that they have any meaning, the idea of one dimensional model of political orientation is brain-dead anyway. You can't actually reflect the variety of political belief like that. Take, for example, Libertarians, who are, as the old joke goes "left of left, AND right of right". That shouldn't be possible, and yet, here we are.
We really ought to quit talking in terms of "left" and "right" and find a richer and more consistent model to describe political orientation.
We would need a higher dimensional political process to apply it to, first. A two party system can only describe one-dimensional politics.
And as long as we stick to this incorrect single dimensional model, we make it even more difficult to talk about 3rd parties, exactly because some (many?|most??) of them don't fit the simplistic left/right continuum. To continue with an earlier example, American libertarians do not fit cleanly on either side of that model. I'm pretty sure there are other examples, but the Libertarian one is the one I'm most familiar with.
It's something of a chicken-or-the-egg problem, granted, but right now it's probably easier to start changing the language we use, than it is to overcome first-past-the-post single-member-district voting systems, etc. [2]
It's not a two party system, but it is a two-party dominant system.
That is a puzzle that should be teased apart.
isn't it so for every science? I mean it is only natural that the conservative views are displaced by education and scientific knowledge. That is almost by definition.
This article is a good example of how liberal viewpoints can also conflict with science:
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/12/when-liberals-attack-so...
I generally agree with older conservative agendas (smaller government, efficiency, equality of opportunity) but would never ever call myself a conservative today. Doing so risks lumping yourself in with an ideology which denies reality.
That being said, I'd also hesitate to label myself a liberal due to some of the less rational aspects of liberalism today (knee-jerk anti-capitalism, safe spaces, GMOs).
: belief in the value of established and traditional practices in politics and society
: dislike of change or new ideas in a particular area
where is education - is learning of new by the ones being educated, and science is a discovery of new knowledge. Thus conservatism and education/science by definition can't occupy the same volume. Conservatism is compatible with only that education and knowledge which accidentally happen to confirm the established and traditional practices and beliefs which are already in place. ( in other words - they sometimes may agree on value, yet always differ on derivative, thus it is 2 completely different mental models)
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.
Yet, the topic here is that conservative-related news items appear to have been suppressed or down-scored on the influential Facebook trending box, presumably by liberal or liberal-leaning curators (or algorithms written by liberal leaning programmers).
How do you conclude that conservatives are uncompromising or closed minded when in fact it is the liberal side that is closing the door here?
Example #1: When a prominent American conservative does something like shutdown the government instead of compromising (remember compromising gets you booted at the next elections see: Paul Ryan). To most of the world (liberal and conservative), this is nuts. Facebook bubbles news reports about how "crazy" this is to the top. American news media will most likely call this a liberal bias when really it's just an international one.
Example #2: If facebook, editorializes a giant Ice-sheet melting and how that is related to anthropogenic global warming (something most International conservatives have accepted), most American conservatives will call that to be liberal bias. Note that this is not about policy decisions, most international conservatives don't agree with Carbon Taxes for instance, but one of just straight facts and assumptions.
This. Facebook agreeing to work with German government to do something about “racism” comments in German version (read: FB users talking about Cologne attacks that weren’t covered by mainstream press at all for weeks). FB blocking links to a mainstream respectable media’s article about freedom of speech in Czech version.
I have no doubt that FB doesn’t consider it bias. They’re righteous and seeing that attitude all over the supposedly “liberal” sphere is frightening.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_Overboard_affair
Which was a release of wrong information that demonised refugees for supposedly throwing their children into the water to blackmail the Howard government into letting them into Australia. This was released by Peter Reith, but it was subsequently revealed it was nothing of the sort, but it helped create a moral panic that boosted the electoral prospects of the Howard government, who subsequently won. It wasn't checked carefully by media organizations who ran the story - so it indeed got out of hand.
Which answered his question.
Because the International Facebook community are sharing and commenting on it organically, or because a group of liberal curators decide that's what Facebook users will see in the trending column?
As far as I understand, it's not the news that's being promoted (let's display this article on global warming, for example) that's the issue here, it's the news that's being suppressed (this Donald Trump post is getting popular, but I don't like his views so let's not display it).
You should also bear in mind that you're commenting on an article where liberals deliberately censored conservative news media. That doesn't do much to support your assertions.
The fact that the American leftist view would be considered centrist in most other countries (like, for example, the nordic countries) is essentially meaningless. Just because "left" takes on different meanings or extremes in different parts of the world doesn't mean that the US is behind or should become more left. To compare US politics to those of Finland, Switzerland, or even Canada is completely absurd. We are a fundamentally different people, system, land mass, you name it. Our political system must take that into account.
[1]:https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_b...)
That makes sense. I will freely admit my opinion of a person changes if I find out that they are a republican or libertarian. Doesn't make them a bad person, but the ideas put out by the prominent members of those parties frequently range from from stupid to completely horrifying.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
Since the basic, overt user-facing functionality of the site can explain the action without invoking heavy-handed moderation, I see no reason to suspect the latter.
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.
Not necessarily, there's still quite a lot of wiggle-room: Except for some narrow areas (Electoral College, impeachment, vacancies, etc.) the Constitution doesn't narrowly define votes as single data-points.
If nothing else, individual states can use "better than plurality" systems to determine their picks for State and Federal legislature.
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.
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".
It's worth noting the candidate who has been most successful (or at least taken advantage of it) on that platform might fit the parent article's definition of conservative (or at least the sort of content they are suppressing).
I don't want to wander too far into conspiracy territory... but it's not completely unreasonable to suspect that a platform with such widespread and frequent use could knowingly make tiny adjustments to make a gentle push on society in one direction or another.
Also see previously: Facebook's study to see how content alters users' moods.
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.
Other governments may be starting to come to the same conclusion.
> Most people thought Facebook news was organically trending.
It's ironic. Silicon Valley is all about question the authorities. Ask why.
And now we hear stories like these Orwellian like practices...
This will be another interesting topic historians will examine years from now. What happens when an outsider/outcast/underdog group becomes the insiders/powerful. Do they act like tycoons in the past (using power to preserve itself) or keep true to the spirit of outsider/outcast that may lead to its demise?
I vote for Silicon Valley powers becoming like the past tycoons.
His thesis is that the pinnacle of power throughout time as technology has evolved has shifted from brute strength, to money in the industrial age, and now finally to information in the post-industrial age which we live in now.
http://www.amazon.com/Powershift-Knowledge-Wealth-Violence-C...
Power is a funny thing... and I suspect people aren't so different than other animals in this regard.
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/15/11410160/hillary-clinton-media-...
In fact, it directly supports the scenario the OP brought up. Frequently Bernie Sanders will bring something up and then the media focuses its article on Hillary's response (even if that article might sometimes be unflattering).
What this shows is the media has a positive bias towards Kasich and Sanders, neither of which were received as such by voters. What it also shows is media bias doesn't always win votes or elections.
Exactly.
> What this shows is the media has a positive bias towards Kasich and Sanders, neither of which were received as such by voters.
No, what it shows is that the media writes way more articles about Clinton, positive and negative.
Imagine the media writes 2 articles about Sanders, one negative and one positive. And then it writes 20 about Clinton, 11 negative and 9 positive. Who is it biased in favor of?
has percentages. You are saying the media is biased towards no one, or has equal biases?
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.
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)
That kind of thing is relegated to smaller and active communities that can decide for themselves what content to exchange.
A highly trafficked global community has to be managed differently, and a system that is completely democratic will be gamed because of the eyeballs it has in front of it.
Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Slashdot, etc. are all sites that have been heavily targeted by astroturfing campaigns. They've all attacked that problem in their own ways, and they all have failed spectacularly.
One way of attacking the problem is curating popular content. It works but it doesn't. Show me the website that has more than a few million daily visitors that has democratized information, and I'll show you a website that is being gamed by marketers. (Seriously... because if it isn't already, I'd love to make a quick buck)
Not necessarily the case, but this is certainly my initial assessment of the situation without learning more.
That said, Facebook is certainly not coming out of this smelling like roses. The "Top Stories" mode is horrible, and Facebook tries really really hard to force you into it, especially on mobile. IMHO it is going to be the death of them in the long term. When they're yet another Friendster/MySpace/etc... this is what I'm going to point to.
Ok, Myspace isn't technically dead, but its heyday is definitely over.
myspace had profiles, that was it.
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)
True, but it could be argued that users are reasonable in assuming that Facebook is a neutral or automatic platform, not manually manipulating content to achieve political goals. If that is true the ethics of misleading millions of people is at best questionable.
Specifically with regards to Facebook, they position themselves as a platform and not as a publisher, so it's not that strange that they're being held to the standards that we expect from a platform, of which neutrality is a big one.
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...
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.
Is Fox "News" covered by these laws? Surely you're not suggesting with a straight face that Fox News is "fair and balanced" ?
It happens on both sides, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to argue that the left is much more guilty of this than the right. Fox News has become a meme because it is the only mainstream news source that blatantly shows conservative bias. Try pointing to mainstream news sources that blatantly show liberal bias and you'd lose count.
No, it just has slightly weaker right-wing bias than Fox.
They have de facto supported nonsensical positions because CNN pioneered the "two sides to every argument" stupidity in their effort to look "unbiased". CNN's reporting is heavily distorted, but the distortion is usually giving credibility when it isn't deserved. Fox simply pushes their agenda directly, while CNN gives cranks a stage no matter how stupid their position is, because calling out even the obviously wrong is "biased". Often this involves conservative opinions (for varying definitions of "conservative"), but almost every opinion of every topic gets the same treatment from CNN.
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.
> 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?
If the bias happens during hiring (by preferring candidates who naturally lean left), then Facebook merely needs to give them curation power without giving explicit instructions.
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/27/angela-merkel-caught-on-hot-m...
The person who brought this to light - the one who not only experienced it themselves but also had the most complain about - says that it wasn't anything pushed down by management.
FB is a nuclear weapon. Chain reactions that start there can take out society in a blink. That has to be understood and digested by society. Doesn't matter what the actual story of the day getting filtered is.
Trump has subverted the republican party in 8 months. 8 years ago a community organizer subverted the dems in 2 years. Look at Corbyn, Modi, Kejriwal, Joko etc etc Its thanks to social media and the like pressing herd of programmed robots that populate it.
Who knows how fast a Trump 2.0, 3.0 and then a 4.0 will take to rise. Its just going to get more and more efficient. The people who see this play out real time everyday, whether its Trump, ISIS or Star Wars marketing are those curators on the front lines. They fully understand how fast the process can work.
They are totally unprepared and untrained on what to do if things are unravelling. Its not surprising at all that some take it upon themselves to act like control rods.
Time to take a serious look at...China...yes China. Cause control rods are necessary.
[0] http://www.theunion.com/opinion/7699648-113/democracy-majori...
hiding Romney ate honey nut cheerios is very different from hiding Romney donates his breakfast to starving children. The former isnt news, the latter type of suppression would be to purposely create a void of positive Romney stories.
that said, facebook's trending stories are a pile of nonnewsshit anyway, most of them should never be brought to peoples attention by choice.
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.
As long as it gets out you mean?
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.
"Will MySpace Ever Lose Its Monopoly?" (2007): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/feb/08/business....
To your point, back in the day, I was having lunch with David Boies (yeah, I know, name dropping, but relevant) and re: Microsoft he said that his position was that EVERY company should have the opportunity to become a monopoly, but then to not be able to use that power of monopoly to deny that chance to others.
My concern with regulatory or judicial constraints here is -- they're always too late. Be it IBM in the 60s or ATT in the 80s or Microsoft in the late-90s/early-2ks, by the time the government gets around to doing anything, the company is already being eroded from beneath.
I think the only (national) example I can think of, in the US, is AT&T, which was able to keep their position because of government licensure. i.e. Natural monopolies don't occur as often as people claim. Incumbency buys patrimony.
Maybe this should go to GP: IF a monopoly arises, AND that entity takes advantage of their monopoly position (reduced quality for price, outrageous margins) almost always, a challenger will appear. And get funded.
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.
Not on TV. Fox Business has quite a lot of libertarians (and some really, really devote Trump supporters). CNN did hire some conservatives who are actual conservatives recently (e.g. Mary Katharine Ham), but it really doesn't change the editorial.
To clarify, I think this an issue of respectability, not reliability.
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.
"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."
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.
> 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.
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.
One of many reasons I don't use FB. I keep an account on there for a few reasons, but I almost never actually look at it.
The problem is that these companies are hiding behind the "But it's all just an algorithm" defense, when, in fact, as we all suspected, there are real people behind the scenes slanting things.
My gut tells me that a lot of tech companies are subtly controlling the types of news their consumers get. Overall this is probably a good thing -- helps keep the quality high. But I'm a libertarian. If a bunch of left-leaning folks start controlling what I consume from a political angle and not just quality angle -- and then lie about it? Really pisses me off.
Yes, you're a private company. Do whatever you want. It's the lying that's the problem here -- and the implication that the electorate needs people better than they are to control and guide what they're allowed to talk about.
I bet we continue to hear about this, and in places most people would never suspect, over the coming decade or two. This is unacceptable, and something is going to need to give somewhere.
As a libertarian, are you equally pissed off when a bunch of right-leaning folks start controlling what you consume from a political, and not just quality, angle—and then lie about it?
Post a comment about Facebook that's worth replying to if you want to steer things away from politics.
EDIT: I said stay on topic, because some will try to go tangent to prevent meaningful discussion on the real topic. Much like politicians not answering questions. This achieves one's goal of causing FUD to keep the person/organization's brand from getting tarnished.
If facebook comes out saying it's not true, will anyone really believe them, knowing their past practices?
Facebook has a lot of eyeballs looking and thus influence, and so the higher-ups there now want to use it to influence others. Much like celebrities do.
And they got to such position of influence using not so good tactics. Are people ok with this? My guess is not.
Moreover, the topic here isn't just Facebook, but their suppression and intentional modification of news and information based on a specific ideological bias.
The problem here is Facebook never claimed to be a news site but a connector for people. But here we find out they were acting as a left leaning news site or a powerbroker.
And I am also meta-pissed when a bunch of money/power-leaning folks start influencing the propaganda themes of both the bunch of left-leaning folks and the bunch of right-leaning folks. Media consolidation just makes that particular channel wider and deeper.
I am not pissed that there is a conservative talk radio station on my FM spectrum, and no other talker on the dial within range. Their bias is open and obvious. if I don't like it, I can listen to one of the 50 identical Bain Capital/THL Partners (IHeartMedia) or Oaktree Capital Management (Cumulus) stations. And I am pissed about that.
I would have preferred if the trending topics learned what I was interested in. I'm not averse to curation (either way), but I'd prefer that users were ultimately in control of their own filters. Even if that filter is "never show any politics, only show cat videos".
Any chance your departure from FB coincided with that little social feed experiment they performed to see if they could manipulate people's emotions?
I've deactivated my account for short periods before, so it's possible I may have deactivated previously during the experiment. But 7 months is the longest I've stayed deactivated & I have no desire to return to FB this time.
Even aside from that friction, there is some potential affinity between Libertarians and Liberals, because Libertarians see no governmental role in issues like gay marriage and use of medication/drugs. Because both groups seek similar outcomes in those areas there would be room for cooperation. But (IMHO) the Liberals are too antagonistic of property rights and self defense rights for this potential to be realized.
Aside from political affinities, I think the real thrust of the parent post was that FB's actions are fraudulent: the product they're delivering to you differs in an important (to some people) way from what they claim they're delivering. In libertarian philosophy, fraud is just one form of force, which is the core evil: the central tenet of libertarianism is to not initiate force against another person.
So at the risk of putting words in someone else's mouth: yes, a libertarian would be equally pissed off if the issue were the mirror of what we see here.
EDIT: end of first para - omitted the "un", significantly changing meaning!
As long as you choose to consume their product, you get the results of their work. Don't like it? Go somewhere else. You should appreciate that as a libertarian.
I see no harm in excluding articles from Breitbart, Washington Examiner, and Newsmax. Or Alternet for that matter. Those aren't news organizations. They're propaganda tabloids which consume the work of Reuters and the AP and regurgitate it with a ton of spin.
So, distort stories to keep eyeballs of main customers (younger hence more liberal) on Facebook, for the sake of earning more ad dollars?
I think the younger customers deserve more than that? Should give more credit to the younger generation no?
Except when you don't know what you aren't seeing.
>Those aren't news organizations. Breitbart has teams of reporters and editors, so does Infowars. Breitbart has offices in different locations, such as London and the U.S. Breitbart has it's reporters following the campaign and they get many exclusives. If we all should agree they aren't news orgs, then the HuffPost isn't a news org.
Why are you making arguments against claims I never made? Also, why do libertarians hate it so much when people use their own basic ideology against them?
No, having reporters and editors who cover current events does. The reason I brought up huffpost was anyone saying breitbart isn't news, immediately I'd have to test them with HuffPo. You know to spot the hypocrite. But anyway, HuffPo and Breitbart are both news orgs like it or not. News has always been slanted whether by selective coverage or the way things are framed. Example: 2 stories about refugees, one covers a family (with photos) where the children speak english (outliers) The other covers a boat load of military age males (again with photos), talks about concern over violence and culture war.
Both would be news stories. One you're likely to find in NPR or the Washington Post, the other you'll find on Breitbart. Sorry you're wrong about what's a news source and what's not. feel free to comment on quality or slant though.
>Why do libertarians... I don't know, ask them.
Of course they are. They control the medium. What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that "it's just an algorithm" isn't a defense. Just because a process involves calculation doesn't make the entire process free of bias or agenda.
The basic decision to use an algorithm is an opinionated decision that affects the outcome. Personal opinion influences how an algorithm was chosen or designed, how it will be applied, the selection of input data, and every other decision made during implementation.
Yes, some time may not intend to add their own bias and opinion, but it still happens. Jacob Appelbaum recently[1] discussed this problem; "Your politics are in everything that you write". The same is true for software and algorithms in general. Your politics are in everything you design. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it exists, and pretending that an an algorithm is "unbiased" or otherwise free from human influence and manipulation is foolish.
Among the deep-sixed or suppressed topics on the list: former IRS official Lois Lerner, who was accused by Republicans of inappropriately scrutinizing conservative groups; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; popular conservative news aggregator the Drudge Report; Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL who was murdered in 2013; and former Fox News contributor Steven Crowder.
What scandals were being discussed yet suppressed from the "trending news" list out of these examples? How many of these examples are actual news stories? The IRS thing turned out to be overblown bullshit, what about the rest of them?
When was the last time you heard your friends talking about Scott Walker, the guy who flopped in the polls and dropped out of the race before a single primary?
It shouldn't be surprising if these curators decided to wait to see if a story being shared from breitbart.com was reported by bigger news outlets first. Many of these so-called conservative media outlets have a terrible record on reporting actual news.
It is possible that Facebook suppresses actual news. It is also possible that this source (falsely) believed that not-really-news-or-trending stories were "suppressed" when in fact they were just not popular or smelt like bullshit.
The claims are that there is a right-leaning bias, if it was a bias against polarized news or poorly sourced articles then this wouldn't be news-worthy.
Is that actually true? The IRS' claim that every drive containing copies of the emails failed makes anything I hear from their side completely non-credible, in my opinion. Technically there is a chance of 100% drive failure, so I can't claim with complete certainty that they're full of it, but I think there were at least three 9s of the claim being bullshit the last time I ran through the numbers.
1) I do sometimes suspect biased curation 2) They can be astroturfed 3) Even if spontaneous there's a virtual mob mentality that comes with trending topics.
Trending topic lists are ok if they're on their own separate page but when you have it upfront the subtext is "this is what you must care or know about".
Anyhow, I find this abhorrent, but I think Facebook has every right to do it as a private entity. I don't think they have a social responsibility to be 100% even. What does bother me is that they claim to be evenhanded, I do want transparency, especially when you are basically the monopoly in social media (excluding Snapchat and Twitter, they own everything.)
This also presents a problem, I think with Twitter's new algorithmic timeline and why the real-time feed is vastly superior for their model (I'll beat this dead horse until Jack realizes how dumb it is.)
"Another former curator agreed that the operation had an aversion to right-wing news sources. “It was absolutely bias. We were doing it subjectively."
My previous rant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11518592
The fact is the truth isn't somewhere in the middle. We shouldn't be encouraging disingenuous assholes by giving them a platform to spread deliberate lies and mis-information, no matter whether that source is "conservative" or "liberal".
But yeah, let's just call everyone we disagree with "disingenuous assholes". The Breitbart story I tried to submit was: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/07/exclusive...
Try clicking on this HN link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182135
You can't even see the link at all as an anonymous user. I don't know if it shows up for people to have 'showdead' enabled, or if it's equivalent of a hellban, where I'm the only one who can see it.
Now if the autoher of the article you posted was training foreign workers not in the US, that would be a different thing. But the article specifies that the person was in the US. Article has some serious bias against foreign workers even though the facts say otherwise.
rt.com is penalized but not banned because occasionally good stories show up there. That's true of most media sites on HN, though the weight of the penalty varies. Again not an ideological call.
"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 fact that the allegation comes from a self-identified conservative and complains about extremist outlets like 'Breitbart' being suppressed, suggests that all they cared about was their own agenda being propagated.
They didn't make a list detailing the treatment of extreme left sites e.g. Daily Kos for comparison. It could be that all non-mainstream political sites received the same treatment.
Facebook deleted my friend John Dickson's post, so this happens. I don't agree with John's post, but I don't expect civil (if I feel misguided) discourse to be deleted. I want to be able to speak to the person and state my position, and have them clarify there's, and so on - you know, free discourse and dissemination of ideas!
Maybe a goal here is to try to ensure that the FB community does not _appear to outsiders_ to be a right-wing, conservative, un-cool community.
If the FB user base were seen as a collection of mainstream, or even right-of-center, people, it would be bad for business. A lot of observers and decision-makers in industry might spend their ad dollars somewhere else.
Heh, not really a big surprise to me. Rule probably doesn't apply to whenever MZ makes a big announcement though. Betting those got stuck high in the rankings from day 1. Anyway, sounds about right for any image-protective service, or, you know, typical state-run-media censorship.
The problem isn't that FB is slanted, but that FB has a near-monopoly on user attention, which allows its slant to be both covert and disproportionately influential.
If FB was one of a selection of companies competing in the same space, political bias would be less of an issue, because it would be more like the print magazine and blog space.
But then you have the problem that the US gov has an entire network of foundations, think-tanks, blogs, PR companies, astroturfers, bought-and-paid-for journalists, and other "thought leaders" who exist solely to present a specific agenda - usually a pro-corporate one.
In the same way that you can't argue with the Fed, you can't argue with a state-organised propaganda machine - not easily, anyway.
So the problem is much wider than FB.
I couldn't agree more. They also have an unprecedented level of reach (billions of users) and user trust (appearance of community opinion vs. news media filtering).
> So the problem is much wider than FB.
Absolutely. Facebook is far from being the only offender here, and in a way, this is a growing pain of new technology. Just as we learned to not trust big media, we also will have to learn to approach social media with skepticism (despite it's inherently organic appearance).
If you read the article, its quite possible that it was also liberal news, depending on individual curators. Given other FB interventions I've seen, I'd be surprised if, like everything else at FB, the news moderation wasn't just stunningly inconsistent with rampant suppression of left, right, and center according to individual and essentially unaccountable whim.
FB is tolerably usable for basic circle-of-immediate-friends social functions without excessive interference. As far as public communication, news, and advocacy, well, its there, and there's enough people that come to it for that that it can't be ignored, but its fairly horrible for it, not so much from a systematic one-sided distortion but more absolute caprice.
"we were unable to determine if left-wing news topics or sources were similarly suppressed"
I see what you're getting at, but I highly doubt liberal news was systematically suppressed. Facebook is a notoriously far-left company, located in a region of the US that is already far-left.
Silicon Valley has a fairly substantial right-libertarian and just-plain libertarian segment, which, in the usual way multidimensional politics are smushed into the US two-party, one-axis system, fall out as "conservative", (and quite a lot of really hard to classify on a liberal-conservative axis types that are extremely socially liberal, but economically center-to-right-libertarian (that is, outside of culture-war kind of issues, they tend to agree more with the center-to-right types on the function of government, as well as leaning libertarian on its preferred degree and means of involvement in fulfilling that function); these don't fit well as either "liberal" or "conservative" in the classical sense, and often aren't very "moderate" though they might get classified that way as a result of being very liberal on some salient issues and very "conservative" (as that works out in the US political spectrum) on others.
The day Bill Clinton got elected, Rush Limbaugh started counting the days of "America Held Hostage".
Today Fox News leads every day with how there is a Nggr in the White House and we all hate Obama and everything he stands for, and it is a tragedy we will get four years of Hillary because the Republicans are so screwed up, and...
Right wing "thinkers" get unlimited funding from the likes of the Koch Brothers and free copies of their books get mailed to all the public libraries in America. Even on "liberal" CNN they regularly have panels of "conservative thinkers", and the Economist features a "conservative thinker" who is a Senator from Nebraska.
When they bring a "liberal" on it is always somebody who works for a campaign or the Democratic party.
Conservatives get all the breaks but they are always bitching they aren't treated fairly. It worked for Nixon but hasn't worked for any Republican candidate ever since.
To get two points right out of the way:
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
So much money gets thrown at anybody who passes the "litmus tests" that the the Republican party has a field of 17 losers who all looked alike and they were bowled over effortlessly by someone who could pick and choose from the litmus test issues to make a message that actually sells.
If there was not so much money for conservative candidates there might have been fewer candidates and it would have been easier for somebody serious to get some traction. Look at how $100 million got spent on those stupid "Ted Cruz is a flip flopper, you always know where Jeb stands, he stands in the same place as Rhett Butler, Han Solo, and Hillary Clinton..." ads -- in the Citizens United age, spending huge amounts of $$ just makes you look like a jackass.
Clearly something the community would like to discuss; clearly something HN doesn't want discussed.
HN even has show dead, so even off topic or blatantly inflammatory/rude/racist/etc comments can still be seen.
It's not clear who (in the hierarchy) is behind the decision to shape the news nor is it clear why they would mainly suppress conservative stories over liberal stories. Are liberal sources less prone to exaggeration? Or would they simply upset their audience less?
Interesting never the less. And certainly this could have serious repercussions on how news is consumed and perceived.
Really the media has been slanted off and on for some time and most techies are very one sided if not blinded by altruistic claims that can never be delivered. Its the only song and dance of "its for the children" - who is going to say they don't like children
Most of the publications that were being "suppressed" are tabloid-esque in manner. The fact that they are all conservative seems to be a problem conservatives may want to fix.
But let's stay focused on the topic, Facebook.
We agreed it would be catastrophic if either decided to lean one way or the other...
Facebook is essentially suppressing free speech. Although, it has somewhat a right to do what it wants, it is skewing what other people share with one another (which is a big deal)
It's not keeping you from posting ridiculous pro-Trump tirades. It's not even hiding those tirades from your friends.
All it's doing is choosing not to shine a spotlight on conservative stories which aren't corroborated by mainstream sources.
Conservativism is mainstream. Part of the problem is that many people who are not conservative have been lead to believe that it is a marginal/extreme ideology. It is not. It may be a majority ideology, but it is at a bare minimum a the second most common.
For what it's worth I don't consider myself a conservative.
That's basically never been even close to the case. Polling from earlier this year had a 37%/35%/24% conservative/moderate/liberal split [1], with "conservative" having a high since 1992 of 40%.
[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/188129/conservatives-hang-ideolog...
I never said that conservatism can't be mainstream. There are plenty of conservative outfits that are part of the mainstream (the WSJ, for example).
Brietbart, however, is not mainstream. Even many Republicans dislike it. Facebook also shouldn't include articles from dubious/questionable liberal equivalents like the Daily Kos.
More concerning than trending news actually being curated news is learning that negative stories about Facebook were allegedly actively suppressed. Doublenotcool at all.
However, that there is "conservative news" and "liberal news" is even more bothersome. Especially that it's offered as something anyone should find to be acceptable as an idea at all.
> But we would have to go and find the same story from a more neutral outlet that wasn’t as biased.
This is delivered as if it is inherently a bad thing, when it most assuredly is not. When I come across a story about anything, I actively prefer to find it covered by a neutral outlet that isn't as biased. This is, to me, a good thing, and what news should be. News should be information about events. If I want opinionated and editorialized news, I'd go after an opinionated and editorialized source. They abound. That anyone who calls themselves a journalist would call out the suppression of "conservative news" or "liberal news", instead of calling out the elevation and coupling of inherent bias in reporting as the problem itself, strikes me as more than worrisome.
To my thinking, there is a difference between news that is of interest to [insert ideological group identification] and news that is delivered through the bias of [insert ideological group identification]. I would love it if there was a way to identify and filter news from a neutral outlet with less (ideally no) bias. I recognize that is largely impossible, as we cannot rid ourselves of our biases very easily. However, we can recognize our biases and seek to counterbalance them. We can also make attempts to actively omit them from news coverage. An outlet can report on facts.
That said, it appears this story highlights both: a biased suppression of news that is of interest to conservatives and news that is delivered through the lens of conservatively biased opinion and sources. The former is entirely bad, as it actively omits information that a group would like to know. The second is far less onerous to me, as I personally would love it if there were algorithmic delivery of actual news from outlets that eschewed biased delivery and editorializing.
Edit: It is made clear in the article that part of the problem stems from Facebook's desire to compete with Twitter for real-time trending news. This is unsurprising, as should the outcome be to readers and users. Facebook created a tool to allow humans to modify news in the trending section that wasn't organically trending. Someone thought this would be a competitive net positive because it could allow Facebook curators to keep up with breaking news that was "all over Twitter". That Facebook hired curators, and that one or more of those curators then divulged information about this tool being used to subjectively inject or suppress stories seems entirely unsurprising. The tool obviously should not exist. Creating it was a very dumb move. Not militantly monitoring and correcting its misuse was even dumber.
Example of trending "conservative news": Obama bans the phrase "Merry Christmas". E.g. http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines-2015/barack-obama-bans-...
"Obama bans 'Merry Christmas'" would likely get far more clicks and trend more than "Obama said Happy Holidays yesterday". To me, the problem is in the headline writing, coupled with silly human behaviors and algorithms. Not sure how to solve that problem.
I think Gizmodo's headline on this story is a compelling example of what I'm talking about. "Facebook has a tool used by curators to modify the Trending News section" probably wouldn't get as many clicks.
The publishers of conservative news stories are not "an entire half of the voting spectrum", so that's not the issue in any case.
So what do you call Vox and Rolling Stone? Do you really have such a simplistic view of the world, where half of America is a bunch of morons with no legitimate gripes? You are destroying America. You are spreading division and hatred instead of understanding and reasoned arguments. I wonder if you would say the same thing if you were commenting with your real name.
Meanwhile there is a real, concrete conspiracy by conservatives to actively suppress the truth, especially in the area of climate science. It would be hard to not notice that the conservative PM of Canada actually banned scientists from speaking to the public, or that Republicans in the USA are constantly trying to defund NOAA and NASA, or that the Republican-controlled 104th Congress of the US forbid the NIH from studying gun violence, among many other examples.
https://books.google.com/books?id=9iLHTFOQLGwC&pg=PA314&lpg=...
Personally, I would rather read sources on the various extremes of the spectrum and make the choice of what to trust myself. The most neutral (in my mind) coverage of US Politics I can find is foreign media such as the BBC.
Keep in mind this is a statement quoted by the curator summing up what s/he said they did over a long span of time. Their recollection of what they tended to do is not necessarily reality. They could be lying in that quote to try to soften what they did. And their quest to find something less biased means diddly given the bias across all news.
Curators would find less biased (read: not as sympathetic to the conservative viewpoint) sources for trending conservative topics, but they would not do the same for liberal topics. So I agree that it's best to find balanced journalism, but that should happen on both sides (conservative and liberal). If they only find less biased sources for conservative media, then that is in itself even more biased toward the liberal agenda. They were censoring or watering down the conservative view point from multiple angles.
How awful.
Also way cheaper than funding a super pac am I right
/me swirls whiskey and tips fedora
Seriously, do you even recognize how condescending you sound?
Saddam had WMDs and participated in 9/11!
Global climate change is a myth/conspiracy!
Obamacare will lead to high unemployment!
Allowing transgendered women into ladies' rooms leads to assaults on our wimminfolk!
The Earth is 6,020 years old and evolution is a Satanic lie!
If Facebook is keeping "news" sources with this kind of debunked, disproven, dishonest "facts" out of my news stream, then I'm going to start spending more time on Facebook.
Additionally, having them out in the open like that lets sane people like you and I go over and point out their silliness. The current approach just allows it to fester.
We're not spying on your emails!
I never sent classified information on that server!
Drone strikes only hit terrorists!
There are no secret "kill lists"!
With this insurance program you'll get to keep your doctors!
We aren't going to make you pay for insurance you don't need!
The SuperDelegates are just a way to amplify Vox Populi!
"If Facebook is keeping "news" like this, then I'm going to start spending more time on Facebook."
> Benghazi was the result of a YouTube video!
Meh. Who cares? That was an insignificant event compared to the climate and government policy.
> We're not spying on your emails!
This one uses the NSA's word game where they claim it's only a "search" when a human looks at it. While I suspect many regular politicians (including Obama) don't fully understand the subject, this one should be counted as a lie.
> I never sent classified information on that server!
Hillary still might be indicted for that, though I suspect the "rich and powerful" will trump "rule of law" as usual. It might be useful to stop framing everything as conservative-vs-liberal, and realize that there are rich people everywhere on the political spectrum. Their most successful strategy was getting everyone else to fight between themselves.
As for empirical reality, I have no idea if it's true. If we're (very) lucky, the indictment will happen and the truth will be revealed in court.
> Drone strikes only hit terrorists!
I agree that this is a lie, but it's non-partisan. Drones strikes (and similar war crimes) started before Obama.
> There are no secret "kill lists"!
(same as above)
> With this insurance program you'll get to keep your doctors!
That's true. If you doctor or supplementary insurance decided to drop you instead of meeting the requirements of the Affordable Care Act, that's between you and your doctor.
> We aren't going to make you pay for insurance you don't need!
You plan to never use medical services?
> The SuperDelegates are just a way to amplify Vox Populi!
I'll agree this one is a lie.
--
To summarize, nothing is perfect, but conservatives have a much more serious problem with reality. Most politicians play political games and dissemble to get what they want, but it's disingenuous to claim both side are similarly wrong. Denial of our climate problems, creationist beliefs, and claiming revenue can be increase with tax cuts (the main source of revenue) are in contradiction with reality in fundamental - and easily observable - ways.
The whole point of my counterarguments is that we should always be critical of views and of people who claim to espouse them. The Democratic party is just as corrupt as the Republican party -- just look at the Chicago machine.
Mostly agree except for that poor video-creating dude who was thrown in jail for a year, plus or minus, as part of cover for a lie during campaign season. Right or left - you've gotta admit that kind of sucks.
We can find abuses of power and corruption everywhere in government if we take the time to look for it, but some problems are larger and need immediate attention. As Londo Mollari said (B5 #3.11).
Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir
to the throne of the kingdom of idiots would fight a war
on twelve fronts.
You're not wrong, mind you--it just goes to show that community discussions are often sculpted and managed.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662331 and marked it off-topic.