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Comment by elthran | Hacker News Reader

I disagree - It's a private company's prerogative to display whatever content they wish - A competitor could choose to suppress liberal articles.

As long as they are not breaking any relevant speech laws, then I see nothing wrong with their actions. If we shut down all biased media, all we'd really be left with is the BBC (although a large number of people would disagree here)

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They absolutely have a right to display what they want. However, just as Fox News gets slammed for claiming to be "fair and balanced", Facebook should be shown the same contempt for claiming their news is in any way an actual representation of what is trending on Facebook. They have a right to do it, but that doesn't mean users have to be ok with it. Furthermore, I would much rather have a biased editorial process that is run by people that have at least been exposed to so form of media ethics, than a bunch of tech managers telling recent Ivy-league graduates what to curate.

It is perfectly possible to affirm that a company has the legal right to do whatever they wish, while at the same time arguing that you find it disgraceful.

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.

> It's a private company's prerogative to display whatever content they wish

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.

I see your point. They are a private company, they have their right to display what they wish, just as we have the right to not view it.

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