Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives | Hacker News Reader

Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives

washingtontimes.com

143 pointssergiotapia222 comments

It's interesting how media outlets are spinning this news. People that read conservative media are left thinking that Facebook has admitted bias. People that read liberal media are left thinking the opposite.

Washington Times: "Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives"

LA Times: "Facebook investigation reveals no evidence of bias against conservative topics, company says"

NY Times: "Facebook Says an Investigation Found No Evidence of Bias in a News App"

WSJ: "Facebook to Revamp 'Trending Topics' Feature to Reduce Bias Risk"

NY Post print edition (my favorite): "You won't read this on Facebook; Site censors the news"

Honestly this is more likely due to the actual outcome being too complex for a headline.

"Facebook denies systematic bias but admits their current process allows bad actors to apply bias and takes remediating steps"

Doesn't work. Although WSJ came kinda close.

the choice of the word rogue says something. That term has been popular in the financial industry in the context of "Rogue Trader" as a way to deflect blame on the company even when they knowingly took part in the conduct.

> "Facebook denies systematic bias but admits their current process allows bad actors to apply bias and takes remediating steps"

If their system allows bad actors to apply bias, that's literally a systematic bias. Unless they're claiming all of their 'bad actors' are symmetrically distributed along every relevant axis[0], that's the same thing as saying that there is a systematic bias.

There is no reason to believe that any 'bad actors' are perfectly representative of the population at large and cancel each other out, and plenty of reasons to suspect otherwise, even based solely on our prior beliefs about Facebook employees (before this story broke).

[0] I say 'every' axis, because even though we're talking about a one-dimensional spectrum (liberal/conservative), in reality, there are many different dimensions along which bias could be introduced.

I took "systematic bias" to have similar meaning to "systematic error" meaning that there is a constant shift on every data point. Admitting the possibility of bias is very different than admitting bias in every single trending content decision.

I think you are confusing "systemic" and "systematic". When someone indicates a problem is systemic, they mean it is rooted in the core of the system, and is thus deeply engrained in the system and present system-wide (and generally therefore requires a change that will affect everything from top to bottom in order to fix).

Edit: though I see you've used systematic from the start, so maybe that was your intention.

> Admitting the possibility of bias is very different than admitting bias in every single trending content decision.

They don't have to admit bias in every content decision. They have to admit systematic bias in content decisions in the aggregate, which does not necessarily imply bias in every content decision.

While it is technically, theoretically possible that their system is open to the introduction of these biases but does not actually exhibit those biases in the aggregate, it is astoundingly unlikely.

> While it is technically, theoretically possible that their system is open to the introduction of these biases but does not actually exhibit those biases in the aggregate, it is astoundingly unlikely.

We're in agreement there. A company that is progressive-liberal by nature is going to show some of that bias the company's actions. Even with a conscious effort to avoid bias they'll fall prey to biases they aren't aware of.

Reading this thread, I'm tempted to think the real headline should be "Facebook screwed over conservative media outlets, but didn't mean to"

This seems to be a game of how much complexity and nuance one can add to a simple story. By introducing "bad actors" and "systemic risk", I'm not sure we're helping anybody understand anything better and instead most sixth-grade readers are probably just going to tune out.

I am curious how many of these medias actually admit that they are biased themselves?

That of course is the interesting question. Of course the media knows they are biased, some even call it out in their tag line like "The conservative voice" others are less outspoken.

Facebook is in an interesting position, they have such a wide swath of populations for reasons other than an editorial slant, they have people on site who might disagree with their position. Unlike the media where people who don't like the editorial bias of a paper simply don't read it.

It would be perfectly reasonable for Facebook to have an editorial position on the stories. But it has asserted that it does not. And that is where things get tricky. We saw on a propublica story about how the machine algorithm can get biased by poor data and assumptions, and we've seen from Facebook's media response that even when they don't have an "official" position, their employees naturally do and Facebook is seeking additional training for them to protect their biases from leaking into their curation choices.

That said, the "reality" of what is and what isn't trending is more about reinforcing one's belief in a position and less about the news. People who believe a story that strongly endorses their position but never trends is "suppressed", and stories that conflict with their opinions but are trending are "biased". I have yet to find any way to have a reasonable discussion about the popularity of views versus the correctness of those views with anyone who believes their point of view is being suppressed by "shadowy influences."

I don't think there is any way for Facebook to win here and a lot of ways it can lose.

Stupid question, I imagine... I thought that Facebook users subscribe to the posting feeds of individuals and organizations of their own choosing. Would not the resulting custom feed be comprised of articles from sources which that particular user selected?

Where is the Facebook editorial bias coming into play?

I have very conservative, and very liberal friends... I myself lean libertarian, which puts my conservative on some issues and liberal on others... so, there is definitely a need for curation for quality, and diversity of opinion.

The trending news section, which is supposedly manually curated.

>t would be perfectly reasonable for Facebook to have an editorial position on the stories.

No it wouldn't, Facebook is nearly ubiquitous. It would have far too much control over dialogue.

My anecdata suggests conservative outlets tend to acknowledge their bias, as a counterweight to liberal bias in the "mainstream" media, whereas liberal outlets tend to believe themselves to be unbiased.

Given how much liberal outlets scoff at the notion of there being a pervasive liberal bias in the MSM, I suspect they legitimately just don't see it as they're surrounded by people with the same political views and so are predisposed to believing that's what "normal" is.

> pervasive liberal bias in the MSM

The biggest cable news channel, the most popular newspaper (I think WSJ leads; EDIT: and certainly it dominates the business world), and almost all talk radio are highly conservative. They try to paint themselves as underdogs, but it's a little silly.

Yes, the big ones are conservative, because every other one is liberal. Conservatives flock to places like Fox and WSJ because they're a refuge from the liberal bias that pervades the rest of the media.

If you're a liberal and you want to watch news that doesn't offend you, you can choose from any of the major networks save Fox. If you're a conservative and want the same, you're stuck with Fox.

> every other one is liberal

I don't agree.

First, there are plenty of smaller conservative ideological publications (two were listed in the original comment, plus endless more: RedState, Daily Caller, Breitbart, etc.). Almost all talk- radio, as I mentioned, is conservative.

Also I said in another comment, there is plenty of apolitical journalism.

  (!conservative) != (liberal)

The ideologues adopt a Manichean, binary view of the world: With us or against us. They say everyone is ideological and anyone who doesn't agree with them must be in the 'other' camp. They seek ideological conflict, to justify their beliefs and behavior. But the world is more complex than that and everyone is not ideological (most are not).

There are leftist ideologues, and they say the NY Times is conservative and there is no difference between the parties (as incredible as that sounds). Either you share their ideology, or you are in the 'other' camp.

The right-wing ideologues are the same: They define any journalism as not ideologically conservative as liberal. (They also call themselves outsiders when the control the 2/3 of the states and both houses of Congress). But it's not the case.

>there is plenty of apolitical journalism

Could you name three major sources of it, preferably not personal blogs? I am asking out of curiosity and disbelief.

I think the real issue is to consider why many people have such a strong emotional reaction to the idea. I think it undermines their worldview that everyone is an angry ideologue, necessary to justify their own behavior.

I think to focus on the angry ideologues is actually to divert the attention from the real issue, to the extent there is one; namely, that neurotypical humans, whether happy or angry, have a strong, automatic in-group bias. If you are one you can't really stop having an in-group; the best you can do is try to give out-group ideas a fair shake.

Now, this ability appears to be quite rare. I wouldn't be surprised if, worse yet, the kind of personality needed to do it made you less likely to become a journalist. In short, I doubt you could staff a newsroom full of people receptive to out-group ideas. (And if you think that you, yourself, aren't biased this way without very strong evidence for it I would suggest you take an outside view, per https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Outside_view)

Because of all of this I'd appreciate a genuine answer to my question even if I end up disagreeing with it.

> If you are one you can't really stop having an in-group; the best you can do is try to give out-group ideas a fair shake.

> Now, this ability appears to be quite rare.

I disagree that it's nearly so difficult or rare. The U.S. rarely has been this polarized, and everyone used to share the same news sources (major network nightly news - which probably still are the leading sources). Again, I think this approach is just the justification of those who want ideological war rather than finding ways, as so many have done so often in history, to bring people together.

> the kind of personality needed to do it made you less likely to become a journalist

You are entitled to your opinion, of course, but I have no reason to believe this statement is accurate.

Personally, I will say that the notion of news "offending" due to editorial stance strikes me as an awful attitude to have. I am only "offended" by poorly thought out, sensationalist, over-emotional reporting that is devoid of facts and plays on fears (this type of "reporting" occurs on both sides, unfortunately). I may disagree with a well thought out opinion, but a well thought out opinion being actually offensive? What an awful thing to think!

At any rate, even back in the old days of media there certainly were many choices for conservative news. Jim Lehrer's PBS Newshour on TV, many regional newspapers, and business papers for instance. Populism had a few non-gossip national tabloids like the New York Post; talk radio too.

It is true that a lot of media was dominated by a modest-left stance (talk radio being the exception), but I don't find bias a problem per se (we all are biased after all). I lean modest liberal personally, but back when I actually watched TV news I thought the PBS Newshour was the best of the lot, as it seemed to avoid some of the scare story traps the "big three" occasionally worked themselves up over.

Of course, these days, thanks to the web, you have every opportunity to silo yourself in one bias you are not "offended by" if you want.

Thanks; those are excellent points IMHO. One important nit:

> poorly thought out, sensationalist, over-emotional reporting that is devoid of facts and plays on fears (this type of "reporting" occurs on both sides, unfortunately)

I think it's important to point out that this is a false equivalency. The conservative outlets that do reporting like this, such as Fox, Rush Limbaugh, the WSJ (it's editorial page, at least) etc. have far more audience than the liberal equivalents (the Huffington Post might be one, but I think even they are better than the three I mentioned).

If we try to be extra fair and say it's equivalent, we hide from what I think is the U.S.'s and world's biggest problem.

> Yes, the big ones are conservative, because every other one is liberal.

How would one measure this? How would one know if what they're detecting is not an opposing bias, but a lack of reinforcement of one's personal bias?

> Conservatives flock to places like Fox and WSJ because they're a refuge from the liberal bias that pervades the rest of the media

That's the story, anyway.

The big corporate old media (including the so-called MSM) has a conservative bias overall, individual outlets ranging from the rightward half of the space covered by the Republican Party through the rightward half of the space covered by the Democratic Party.

The far right considers everything but the most right-wing fringe of that to be the "liberal" mainstream media

Your statement is actually a lot of evidence that it isn't silly. They dominate AM radio has been something the liberals have been claiming as evidence against media bias for years. I'd say if the only place those people could get their views aired was AM radio it kind of proved the point that the mainstream media (TV, every newspaper and magazine except for those which are specifically conservative) accepts the slightly left of center as normal

From the perspective of an American, the American MSM has a liberal bias. From the perspective of a citizen from most other first-world countries, the American MSM has a hardcore conservative bias.

That's because it's comparing apples to oranges. Liberal/Conservative in America is not necessarily the same as Liberal/Conservative elsewhere.

That's literally the point I was trying to make. I don't think it's valuable to place media outlets on an isolated spectrum. Global information sharing is a reality. I gather my news from sources situated in various countries. And I judge their bias according to a somewhat global spectrum. The American spectrum is so perverted (mostly due to religious beliefs) that I often find it hard to place international sources within it.

>> American spectrum is so perverted

As compared to what?

From the perspective of this non American, the America mainstream media seems to have more of a 'pro corporation/pro establishment' bias than anything else. Why else would it be so eager to criticise both Trump and Sanders?

A "pro establishment bias" is a conservative bias.

> My anecdata suggests conservative outlets tend to acknowledge their bias

"Fair and Balanced"?

Reality has a notorious liberal bias. Look at climate change, which went from scientific position to liberal position.

Just so you know, I read "Reality has a $MY_POSITION bias" as "I've completely epistemically closed myself by reading only what I agree with". Perhaps not something you really want to advertise quite so loudly.

Parroting lines from the Daily Show/Colbert Report only makes you seem credible to other young lefties. You're not going to win any converts from the other side; we'll tend to roll our eyes and dismiss the speaker.

The line stuck so well because it was so poignant when Colbert said it. This was a time when Karl Rove was criticizing people in the "reality based community" who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality."

Since then the republican party has gone even further off the deep end.

>Since then the republican party has gone even further off the deep end.

Which you say, sincerely, because you're a liberal and the GOP is the other "team" or "tribe". There are plenty of us who don't think of ourselves as Democrats who see plenty of insanity on the left--look at the resurgence of socialism or the social justice crowd on campus and in the media.

Both parties have completely lost touch with voters, which is why we saw populist insurgencies in both. If there were more candidates in the Democratic primaries, we could just as easily have seen a Sanders nomination as we did a Trump one.

Claiming that political insanity is endemic to only one side ignores the batshit lunacy emanating from both camps.

There are plenty of republicans who believe their party is going off the deep end, Mitt Romney for example.

And I think there's a lot of insanity on the left too.

Thinking a liberal satirist made a good point does not make one a mindless tribal zombie.

Look at both climate change and the genetics of intelligence to see how America's political groups deal with the scientific consensus.

I'm going to have to remember this one.

I think this election has demonstrated the media's bias fairly well.

This cracks me up because some people believe the media has treated Sanders unfairly, others believe they've treated Trump unfairly. Maybe both.

Personally I believe left/right bias isn't that interesting. The media has a strong bias toward sensationalism, and in elections there's a strong bias toward reporting on a horse race. Maybe this is the bias you're talking about. IMO these biases have helped Trump and Sanders respectively.

What a weird society we live in where everyone thinks the media is biased and few agree on exactly how.

Yea, but not their own recognition of the bias (which is the useful part).

Do you think they'd recognise their own bias? That would be like saying "we can't do journalism properly", because proper journalism is unbiased.

There is no such thing as unbiased journalism. Without bias, what you have is cacophony of competing interpretations of events. Even reporting "just the facts" consists of making judgement calls that introduce bias with respect to which facts you report, and what you accept as fact.

I'd rather have reports from sources that don't try to pretend to be unbiased.

cspan is probably the closest thing to unbiased journalism, it's great, but no, it isn't a money maker and is only entertaining to those truly seeking the raw content. I agree that for reporters, the least they can do is acknowledge their own bias. If anything, that acknowledgement goes far towards mitigating said bias.

> That would be like saying "we can't do journalism properly", because proper journalism is unbiased.

I'm not entirely sure about this. Trump's been eating the media's lunch in interviews; perhaps a more biased approach acknowledging his interview games would actually lead to better reporting.

Without bias how do you pick your stories? Without bias how do you pick your sources? Bias towards official sources is ubiquitous.

Bias is an integral part of journalism, it's up to the reader to understand this fact and collect information from multiple sources (if they're so inclined).

The media's bias is towards sensationalism. Bernie has the personality of cold oatmeal.

of course they're biased. profit-seeking enterprises are strongly incentivized to not bite the hand that feeds. (not that state news isn't subject to this.) as noam chomsky has talked about, they "manufacture consent".

you see it in say, chris matthews basically trying to "assassinate" sanders while cozying up to clinton.

In an alternative scenario you could have the state-run media, cough insert-name-here cough, simply forcing every single outlet to run with their version of the headline:

"There still is no Facebook, only use National Party Communication Gathering Website!"

Studies have found that state run media in democratic nations are the least biased.

NPR, BBC.

NPR is an independent organization. It receives some flow through federal dollars, but it isn't state run.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR#Funding

Publically financed and state run are two very different things.

If you genuinely think NPR is the least biased news source available in the US, you have more serious problems.

So what's an example of a less biased news source, and why do you think it's less biased?

I find the CSMonitor to be a good source for review articles (not breaking news, but breaking news is rarely that informative IMO): http://www.csmonitor.com/

I read the Economist and while I won't call it unbiased, it's honest and usually presents both sides.

For day-of news it's tougher but direct Reuters pieces usually have minimal interpretation and are pretty good.

Out of curiosity, what would "unbiased" look like to you if "usually presents both sides" doesn't make the cut? Are you looking for more sides than two, or less than one? Something else entirely?

but the Reuters' headline writer has a hate on for Israel. "Palestinian Dies in Ramming Attack" was one such title.

Way to start a flame war.

No, I just believe calling Reuters unbiased is not true. They do have a lot of anti-Israel headlines to the point its become a joke.

Or maybe they have a lot of unbiased headlines on the topic and you are biased?

I think pointing out the death of a attempted murder over the people he was trying to kill would be an outrage in any city in the US.

Fox News is less biased than NPR.

You joshing us, son???

You're bringing a butter knife to a nuclear war. If you're going to make that claim you need something a hell of a lot more than "you joshing us, son???". :) It's not like this isn't an area that's been investigated to death in media studies 10x over for the past decade+. The data is out there, no need to take anyone's word on it.

Nah.

I was insinuating that Fox News is EXTREMELY biased to the right. But to say that NPR is not left wing leaning... that's a complete joke. Diane Rehm is as much a militant democrat as O'Reilly is a republican. At least O'Reilly is for show. Rehm just has a smugness about her that smacks of distaste for all things republican. She builds one strawman after the other and lets her guests kick them down. Even for shows like PHC or WWDTM, they often delve into "low brow" territory where simply "being republican" is the punchline.

Fox News is almost comedic at this point. NPR is much more insidious.

Also note this website (HN) itself is very left leaning in its ideology. Probably because the vast majority of the viewership adhere to the common SV psychology, which is also left leaning.

Myself? I find it all disgusting, harbor distrust for all media. Like someone else mentioned... a long time ago (before I was born, I'm sure) they stopped telling the news and started hocking style to sell advertising space. You have to be awfully stylish yourself not to get sick of it once in awhile.

Well, if judged by the criteria of "which listeners are the most accurately informed" then, yes, npr is the least biased news source.

http://www.businessinsider.com/study-watching-fox-news-makes...

Of course, reality has always had a liberal bias.

How would you describe NPR's bias?

Can you give some references? Might be a good read.

From just today, evidence of NPR bias: http://www.mediaite.com/uncategorized/emails-show-npr-cancel...

Well sure, that wasn't the intended brunt of the joke. It's an alternative reading that you've put forward, which in some way, is related to the parent comment's observation. Hence picking the term 'forcing' - that was on purpose.

I think this is just what Facebook wants. Conservatives will come away believing that Facebook acknowledged the bias and is Doing Something About It. Liberals will come away believing that Facebook was cleared of wrongdoing -- as they should have been since the idea that there was any bias to apologize for is, as always, a VRWC invention.

Either way, Facebook wins.

When I think liberal publications, I think Huffington Post, Salon, the Intercept, Vox, etc. What are they saying?

The NY Post and WSJ are Murdoch/Fox/News Corp publications; they are on a mission. Last I knew the Washington Times was owned by the cult leader Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church - I never understood why anyone takes it seriously.

But there still is apolitical journalism in the world; it's hardly impossible to do. The political operatives like to paint everything as politicized in order to delegitimize news they don't like, and to legitimize their own propaganda campaigns by making it a norm.

Shall we talk about WaPo and Bezo's beef with Trump?

I thought Bezos overstepped the bounds of a newspaper owner, though Trump did attack his publication. But what does that prove or disprove about the comments above? The Washington Post wasn't mentioned.

That's exactly the point, WaPo is actually leading the lynch mob against Trump, NYT's efforts look pale. There was time during Bush presidency when WaPo could have been centrist-ish. Even before Bezos stepped in to it took a left turn and after Bezos (a guy known for his Union busting tactics - well anti-union formation tactics), it became even more Leftist (the Corporate version).

You did not mention WaPo and NYT in liberal publications, and if you do not consider them liberal, then your politics are pretty hard core Leftist.

Being corporatist and union-busting isn't exactly a sign of being a leftist.

And, while many leftists are anti-Trump, some of his most strident opponents have been movement conservatives.

> You did not mention WaPo and NYT in liberal publications and if you do not consider them liberal, then your politics are pretty hard core Leftist

Hard core leftists almost universally think the NYT is conservative, bought and paid for by corporations and the establishment. Hillary Clinton supporters think the Times is out to get her (they broke the email server story, for example). Of course, conservative ideologues love to demonize the Times.

If you're looking for an apolitical news source, it's a good indicator when ideologues on all sides think the publication is biased against them. So I disagree about the NYT, regardless of the oft-repeated common wisdom about them.

Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of the Post; it was shrill and sensationalist for awhile after Bezos took over, but now has calmed down. Certainly their editorial page has been anti-Trump recently, but many on the right share that perspective.

> The NY Post and WSJ are Murdoch/Fox/News Corp publications; they are on a mission

And Huffington Post, Salon, Vox are not on a mission?

> And Huffington Post, Salon, Vox are not on a mission?

Yes, that's why I identified them as the liberal publications.

The way you structured your post, it made it seem like you were insinuating Huffington Post, Salon, the Intercept, Vox, were somehow not demonstrating strong bias nor advancing towards a "mission".

With the recent headlines, editor's notes, and articles HuffPo has run, it's becoming difficult to view them as a news organization rather than a tabloid.[1]

    The headline on the homepage, in bold, red, 
    72-point font, reads: "NH GOES RACIST SEXIST
    XENOPHOBIC." 

    In late January, Huffington Post announced that all of 
    its Trump-related articles would include an editor's note 
    reading, "Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, 
    racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly 
    pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an 
    entire religion -- from entering the U.S."
    
    While the editorial stance may delight Trump's detractors, 
    it is viewed by many members of the political press corps 
    as unbecoming of an outlet that bills itself as a news organization.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/09/politics/huffington-post-donal...

I think an apt comparison to Huffington Post would be the Drudge Report. Another news aggregator featuring sensational headlines engineered to outrage its polarized, loyal readership.

The Drudge Report innovated first; it debuted in the mid-90s. I think it's likely that the Huffington Post was in large part inspired by the success of the Drudge Report.

If WSJ is "liberal media" we might need new definitions to work from.

Facebook will apparently modify how its trending topics work after this. So I'm leaning to believe that it was indeed biased (whether intentionally or not through the types of people Facebook hired, that's another issue).

What's funny to me is that about a year ago Politico had an article [1] about how Google can influence elections, when to me the elephant in the room was actually Facebook.

I have no doubt Google can influence elections (especially through its corporate media "AMP partners" [2] that get shown in a carousel on Google above everything else, and through automated top answers), but at least on Google you have to show some kind of intent when searching for something. I'm not going to see Hillary Clinton articles when searching for a new laptop.

On Facebook, stuff gets pushed to you potentially trying to change your views every day. So I do think Facebook is the bigger danger for this sort of thing.

[1] http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-google-co...

[2] http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-10/07/google-accele...

Oddly enough there's enough leeway that they are all correct, from a certain point of view.

Bayesian Star Wars : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8IuGxP4Pa4

Is bias illegal?

Should it be?

Whatever the answer the political class would like to apply to Facebook, should it not also be applied to the traditional mass-media?

Don't be ridiculous. No one is arguing to get rid of free speech. And no one is saying FB should be banned from censoring. But people are saying they dont like FB censoring. And FB is trying to reassure they dont. Why you ask? Isnt this a double standard, you ask?

FB as primarily a communication platform is not traditional mass media. And as such people have different expectations. I don't really want my communications platform censoring posts, etc. wheras I may be okay with my news outlet showing bias.

FB and WaPo serve different functions, and people have different expectations. That's all.

Slightly off topic - Why does it seem there are so many more liberal news outlets than conservative ones?

Evan Sayet has some thoughts on this (many videos on youtube). In a nutshell, Liberals like to talk about things, whereas Conservatives like to do things. So liberals go into fields like journalism, acting, teaching, etc.

Because there's many more ways to disagree than ways to agree.

I suspect this may be an unpopular opinion, but given that in my experience, the Trending tab tends towards garbage and clickbait instead of real news, one would imagine Fox News hysteria and Facebook's Trending news would be a match made in heaven, and if it weren't for personal curation, we would see even more garbage as a result.

Yeah, if they use clicks to train the thing surfacing the news items it's pretty likely that the thing will start surfacing click bate.

Thats because those things avoid PR shitstorms.

You see the same thing with what Reddit has on their default front page.

It's funny how BuzzFeed or Vox shit is deemed reasonable by the left while Fox News shit is treated as, well, shit.

No. Both are shit.

I'm not sure when I've ever seen someone deem Buzzfeed's shit "reasonable".

To be fair buzzfeed does have some decent long-form journalism. Just like any media company, they want as many eyes as they can get, whether they're reading intently or glazed over during a commercial break.

You can't give employees the power to filter content then label them as "rogue" when a bias inevitably emerges. Obviously any innate biases (overt or not) will influence what gets filtered.

Exactly. This outcome was clear. FB handled this astonishingly poorly and now it looks like they were lying the whole time. Which honestly I'd probably true since it's so obvious that personal bias would enter.

"But with nearly two-thirds of Facebook users saying they get at least some of their news from the online platform, conservatives said any chance of bias could skew political conversations."

Two-thirds... get at least some... Ooookay? I'm not sure at what point we're all supposed to start running around with our hair on fire. Am I supposed to pretend that the much smaller number of people who rely on Facebook for their news were ever going to be great in a political (or any other) conversation?

They still haven't shown that there's any sort of anti-conservative bias. Finding a trending topic and using the best source available to represent the information is not the same thing as bias. Conservative sites are, by definition, not the best sources available.

Well, other than Facebook admitting to the possibility of bias.

Well, that's why everyone who's ever been on trial for murder is a murderer.

Wait, that isn't correct? Neither is the Washington Times headline... but then, the Times is about as mainstream as it gets for the right-wing fringe. The content of the article disagrees with their headline.

Saying that there's a possibility is not the same as saying that there's a certainty. Except when it comes to political nonsense.

I honestly have no clue what you are going on about.

To be honest, I'm a.) somewhat surprised that people are surprised by this b.) not sure why there is a government probe into this. Also the irony of Glenn Beck bitching about bias in media is definitely not lost on me.

Glen Beck actually wrote a piece after the meeting saying he took Mark at his word, and complained about the tenor of the other conservatives in the meeting: http://www.glennbeck.com/2016/05/19/what-disturbed-glenn-abo...

> But until then, based on our research and my personal experience with Facebook, I believe they are acting in good faith and share some very deep, fundamental principles with people who believe in the principles of liberty and freedom of speech.

I was quite surprised at the very reasonable position Glen Beck took. Very interesting.

There are accusations that he's sucking up to Facebook for more exposure to save his failing web enterprises. I don't know enough to say which is which, but there's almost always another side to the story.

Whatever else he is, he is intelligent and cynical.

Glenn Beck's organization is hemorrhaging cash and he's looking for a cow to milk. Why he thinks it'll be facebook is beyond me.

The fact that he went to the meeting suggests that he had some questions about bias in media.

Facebook invited a group of who they considered "leading conservatives" to Facebook to discuss this personally after the allegations came out. Glen was on that list. I don't think many people would have turned down that invitation, whether or not you had concerns beforehand.

That meeting featured the leading right-wing clowns. The sad thing is that they are the most popular "conservative" pundits.

Facebook could do better to engage with less shrill demagogues on all side of political spectra, instead of promoting clowns.

(Note: a clown is a smart person who plays for a dumb audience.)

Look, I used to really like Glenn Beck, his conspiratorial tendencies for the past 8 years or so have driven me nuts. However, he is completely open about where he comes from, he is biased and admits it. He doesn't claim to be some neutral arbiter or a journalist.

The problem arises when people claiming to be journalists, or neutral (NYT, facebook) change stories based on their own biases without stating what they really are. NYT Opinion, or editorial board, sure, fine, have biases. But the front page should not be biased, neither should facebook.

I want journalists in the vein of Tim Russert, Chris Wallace or Lisa Ling. If they have biases they certainly conceal them extremely well. Chris Wallace is not afraid to ask hard questions of politicians, especially of conservatives, despite being on Fox News. Lisa Ling is amazing too, she may not ask tough questions per se, but watching her be so unbiased/open with people like drug dealers, polygamous families or pedophiles is rather impressive. She is legitimately trying to see the world through her subjects eyes, as revolting as that may be for 80-99% of the population.

I don't really follow this closely but did FB ever indicate to be unbiased?

This is a big deal because "the system" has shown a lot of hate toward things that oppose it. Even Stephen Colbert (our would-be go-to celebrity) has clearly aligned with the propaganda. The system is about to have themselves voted against and so now it will align with the new power.

If Facebook et al are going to replace the dying traditional print and broadcast media, maybe they need to be subject to the equal-time rule as well? Pushing "Don't forget to vote!" reminders only to Facebook users who are likely to vote in favor of facebook-friendly policies and candidates is one interesting anecdote I've seen. I take it with a grain of salt but it's nevertheless illustrative of the power that can be wielded with such a platform/network. It definitely can be done, so why wouldn't it?

What equal-time rule are the traditional print and broadcast media in the US subject to?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine (defunct)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule

It's always a "rogue employee"

There are phases to big corporate press releases for these things.

1. My dog doesn't bite 2. My dog does bite but it isn't my fault 3. My dog wouldn't have bitten if consumers had more personal responsibility (I don't see how they could ever make the leap to this one)

4. That is not my dog.

¹ http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-bosch... ² https://youtu.be/SXn2QVipK2o?t=52s

VW emissions scandal a couple of 'rogue' engineers as well....

It's also sort of believable that it would be people doing their own thing rather than a huge, fairly well run corporation doing something transparently stupid. The controversy probably isn't costing Facebook much, but it isn't doing them any good either, and it's pretty easy to predict that coloring the feed will piss people off.

The original claim from the single person that started this whole show made that claim as well.

Misconduct attributed to designated whipping boy.

It seems to me that the same system that dialled in the ratio of happy to sad news was used here as well. Given that it's a configured system, hard to see how no one in charge was aware of the conservative misconfiguration.

I'm still waiting for the Fox News bias probe.

It is interesting, how we collectively accept news organizations of having bias and falsifying news. And yet a social media site, with no need to be balanced, this bias is seen as unacceptable. Maybe because we can easily see the blatant bias of the news organizations, but the thought of being subtly manipulated irks us.

This is exactly the point. Fox carefully manipulates, coverage, actual delivery by journalists and counter points to advance their agenda, as I'll admit MSNBC does as well. Crying wolf on Facebook is ridiculous in the grand scheme of things imho.

Evidence seems to indicate that MSNBC is actually the most biased news network.[1]

[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/14/five-facts-a...

I think you're referring to this part of the linked article:

> In the final stretch of the campaign, nearly half (46%) of Obama’s coverage on Fox was negative, while just 6% was positive in tone. But MSNBC produced an even harsher narrative about the Republican in the race: 71% of Romney’s coverage was negative, versus 3% positive.

I am unsure it supports an argument for being the "most biased news network" outside of a specific election.

Also, it does not appear to account for reporting on a sitting president (who is also running for reelection) and will generate non-election news as well as election news versus a candidate who is not currently generating much news outside of their election.

The problem with this study is that the data wasn't controlled for being about a president vs. a candidate.

There's going to be a number of mundane stories mentioning the president (i.e. bills being signed, travel, meetings, etc.) that are outside the scope of what's also being reported on a candidate.

The result is that any organization that is reporting on the president will inevitably mention the president in articles that are less biased, skewing the results comparison.

And the msnbc one? And pbs? I can't name any unbiased news source in the US.

Why am I supposed to care? Facebook isn't a news source. They're a software company. They're under no obligation to be fair and balanced.

They wouldn't be under an obligation to be "fair and balanced" even if they were a news source. That's utterly irrelevant.

However, given that the American electorate skews 37% conservative, 35% moderate, and 24% liberal, they might have a fiduciary duty to their stockholders to not alienate large swathes of users.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/188129/conservatives-hang-ideolog...

News organizations also are under no obligation to be fair and balanced (obviously). They don't even have to pretend they are if they don't want to. Some think they should be obligated, but that's a different discussion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11764095 seems to suggest that at least political candidates can "enforce" some fairness if they'd care to do so.

You're probably right. This again is a demonstration of how much facebook is now a public utility more than it is a software company at least in people's minds.

nobody is really obligated to be "fair and balanced", even people who use that expression.

I don't think this is a problem that's specific to any one bias, nor will it go away when "rogue employees" are dealt with. I think this is an issue that's inherent to turning dials to tune what you want people to see in any kind of content-aware way.

I also don't think that's necessarily problematic, but it probably is for Facebook because it has a near monopoly on its particular type of service, and because it gives the appearance of being content-neutral.

I don't know if it made any difference in this story, and I hate both parties in the US, but I notice that the "right-wing" posts on FB are normally a notch or two uglier than those from lefties. I've got quite a wide range of friends from my travels from the fox news contingent all the way to real communists.

I speculate that it's because those on the right are more "ends justify the means" type of people. Curious what others think.

If you can generalize all people in a wide-area political spectrum as all are "ends justify the means", then I would suggest you meet more people in that spectrum before denouncing them as a group.

I know dozens, and do not denounce them. It's a valid philosophy.

Well then, if you know dozens then I stand corrected.

Facebook also known to use bots to increase their ads revenue. True evil company.

I started using this Chrome extension to block Facebook trends: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/block-facebook-tre...

I checked the source and it just seems to grab the div and set the style to hidden. It's not perfect, because when I open Facebook sometimes Trends are visible for a second, but it's much better than glancing at the section and being drawn into clicking on whatever celebrity news or other headline-of-the-moment is trending.

It's kinda insidious--I don't watch TV or read celebrity gossip sites, but when the Trend says some Kardashian posted a selfie that people are talking about, I'm tempted to click and see the photo just to see what the discussion is about.

I use ublock origin and created a rule to block the trends feature. Just right-click the element and then select "block this". I suppose it would be optimal to create a rule to block the whole damn site, but baby steps ...

FB Purity goes a lot further as far as customizing the Facebook UI. I heartily recommend it!

The concept of unbiased news is in my mind troubling. How can one have editors that won't make judgment decisions?

The more tightly one boxes the editors in with rules the more predictable the enterprise becomes. And a predictable huge enterprise is a standing invitation to be gamed. There is a whole industry of marketeers and political hacks searching for new ways to leverage others infrastructure and social assets to get their message out. The human element so far seems vital to protect against spam. Even Google can't stand still and constantly tweaks their rules - and gets taken to court for it too.

And if one has editors making decisions and they are all young they tend to be on average more left than the general population.

It is hard for Facebook to win here. The best move may be not to play.

Maybe one could let organizations register with social media platforms as a political speech organization. This would opt them out of algorithmic timelines and ensure that their followers always see their broadcasts. There would have to be some sort of downside, though, otherwise everyone would sign up as a political entity. Maybe if you're political you never show up in suggestions/organic recommendedations? The decision to self-identify as political speech would have to be in the hands of the indivudual orgs, otherwise you'd have the same filtering problem where people would just make speech they don't like as non-political.

Is this the Washington Post? or the Washington Times?

the Washington Times strikes me as having "conservative bias" as shown in their piece on the Democrat's War on Piece.

Or in other words: “people who chose a single source for news complained that this one source is biased”. Let’s not learn the lesson that perhaps it is a good idea to seek multiple sources so that biases are kept in check and accuracy is improved. Oh, and let’s make sure to demand that Facebook do exactly what we want since we’re not even paying for access to Facebook.

Haha. An article on conservative bias in a newspaper that is the epitome of conservative bias. Stand by for the "truth" as Fox News reports on the Washington Times report.

The irony of the Washington Times complaining about bias...

"News" organizations who can barely report on the temperature outside without it dripping with bias who use their platform to push their agendas are stoking anger against another platform for being biased?

It's very beneficial for news media to oust social media as bias. This was a con job from the beginning.

I've never even looked at the "trending" section, anyway. So I guess this is yet another happening in modern American society which is generalized to imply societal importance but that really boils down to idiots yelling at other idiots.

Now it's employees' fault. It's nice to be able to blame grass roots, not the processes.

Why would they be able to filter that has been represented at all?

"Man is by nature a political animal." --Aristotle

Here is an example of recent FaceBook censorship: http://youtube.com/watch?v=25tYyAgejA8

This just in: people have personal opinions!

Reality has a strong liberal bias.

Now if only we could get crazy conservatives to boycott facebook.

I'm totally fine with this. If you want to advocate for a world in which all resources are privately-owned (leaving no commonly-owned space for discourse) and that a global, multi-billion-dollar social media service has the same free speech rights as a mom and pop grocery, then you deserve to reap the rewards of your own ideology.

As an advocate of free markets and private property, I don't have any issue with bias expressed by or within Facebook. That's their prerogative. However it's my prerogative, if I so choose, to publicize their bias and dissuade others from using their platform. Rather than appeal for state intervention in the matter, I sense that's what a great deal of others are attempting to do.

It's not always that. Most of the thinking I've heard about this is not to control what Facebook may or not do. Many critics say that Facebook is a private company and can do what they want. The complaint among them is that Facebook lies about it.

Why would "Facebook is a private company and can do what they want" not apply to lying, as long as it doesn't become fraud?

Oh sure, they could lie. It's not that these people are necessarily demanding laws about the company lying, it's more a suggestion that it's not a nice thing to do. It is the outcry of people with little power to do anything other than complain about an injustice they see. I hear it's quite a popular thing to do on the left side of the political spectrum in the US.

This is not about free speech in any way.

You are correct, but the conservatives calling Facebook out on that are trying to tell everyone it is:

> I believe they are acting in good faith and share some very deep, fundamental principles with people who believe in the principles of liberty and freedom of speech.

http://www.glennbeck.com/2016/05/19/what-disturbed-glenn-abo...

Of course it isn't...but it is what Republican Free Speech is(c).

It is similar to Republican Jesus (https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/republican-jesus)

"But with nearly two-thirds of Facebook users saying they get at least some of their news from the online platform, conservatives said any chance of bias could skew political conversations."

I really don't understand this whole situation? How is this happening?

If the argument is "We don't like how you're skewing news about our kind", how is this not seen as pure hypocrisy and laughed out of the room?

Can you imagine the uproar by Conservatives if a Liberal group demanded a meeting with Roger Ailes over their manipulation of Liberal talking points, skewing political conversations across the country for the last 30 years?

How can anyone on the Conservative side, especially pundits and politicians that rely on Fox News to spin their very special brand of stupid, stand up and say "Facebook is in the wrong?"

A key difference between Fox News and Facebook is that Fox commentators are pretty much advertising their bias. Bill Oreilly is clearly stating his personal opinions.

Facebook is stating it's politically neutral but it wasn't.

Another thing to considers is that Facebook is a monopoly in the social networking business. There are probably half a dozen news networks on a cable plan, plus nearly infinitely online news outlets.

If you don't like Fox news, there is CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg, etc. Facebook has no direct alternative.

Their tagline is "Fair and Balanced". In reality they're nothing of the sort.

Here is a link describing how Trending topics works:

https://www.facebook.com/help/737806312958641

Where does it state Trending topics is a neutral source for unbiased news? They admit readily that an algorithm does much of the work, but that it also relies on human intervention. And the Valley, including Zuckerberg, have worn their "liberal" ideals all over their sleeves via their actions.

They sold people on a tagline, while never really being up front. Need I again quote Zuckerberg's infamous opinion on people trusting him? Let's not forget his shenanigans in India with "free" but hobbled internet.

They're as open about how things really work as Fox. Unless Fox is suddenly inviting people into their meetings where editorial directives are discussed. They put some friendly language on there, making a vague claim, then feed people bullshit.

The mental gymnastics people go through by blindly accepting such shallow rhetoric like "Fair and Balanced" or "We're neutral" without really verifying is bizarre.

Facebook has competition in the form of dozens of news aggregators; Apple, Google, Microsoft, Pocket... This is about one feature of Facebook. Not the entire enchilada.

My frustration is not with Facebook lacking competition. It's the aforementioned obtuse behavior of the populace at large, the mind-boggling mental gymnastics being employed, in thinking that these large, opaque corporate machines are focusing on the end user. The phrase "if it's a free service, you're the product, not the customer" comes to mind. Facebook sells eyeballs to others. They have little interest in being neutral.

Please don't create many obscure throwaway accounts on HN. This forum is a community. Anonymity is fine here, but users should have some kind of consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we might as well have no usernames and no community at all, and that would be an entirely different forum.

Facebook admitted to the problem, so those people may be wrong about Fox News but in this case they were correct with Facebook.

Just because someone is wrong about one thing doesn't automatically make them wrong on everything else. That's just an excuse to dismiss them.

Can you link to where they admit to anything more than the possibility of wrongdoing?

What they're saying appears to be "we involved humans, we acknowledge humans can be biased, we will remove some human involvement going forward" which is very different than "we hid stories from sources we don't like."

Some conservative groups (and the author of this article, seemingly) would have you think they acknowledged that they did something wrong but I only see them stating the opposite.

I don't need to link a source, you summed up my meaning of the problem they admitted to quite well on your own.

You look confused. Probably because people want to call facebook "social media" and Fox News is also called "media".

Fox News produces editorial content. They are entitled to their opinion thanks to the first Amendment. Facebook is a delivery channel. They do not produce editorial content so they are not allowed to have bias in the very same way that your TV set is not allowed to receive only conservative news channels.

edited for a better analogy.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11763281 and marked it off-topic.

Not "allowed"? By whom? I'm afraid it's you who is confused. The first amendment doesn't recognize a difference between "editorial content" and non-"editorial content". Comcast could carry only conservative channels without issue.

>Comcast could carry only conservative channels without issue.

This is nonsense. When there is concentration in information distribution, the distributor must allow anyone and everyone equal access to the channel.

According to what, your gut? If you're going to keep insisting that companies "must" do this or that, you need to cite the law that requires them to do so.

According to anti-trust law.

Anti-trust laws are about preventing monopolies, which Facebook is not, and have nothing to do with mandating any kind of fair service for non monopolies. No case can be successfully made calling Facebook a monopoly on social networks, you don't have to use them there are many other options.

Anti trust law does not deal only with monopolies. It is about companies with dominant positions.

Is facebook a company with dominant position?

You're talking about things you don't understand, there is no case anyone can rationally make that Facebook is subject to anti-trust laws. You do not have to use Facebook, there are tons of other social networking sites, Facebook is not using anti-competitive practices to prevent competition.

Anti-trust laws require far more than just being popular to apply and there's nothing in them that applies to Facebook or any other website. Anti-trust laws in the U.S. have never successfully been used against a website because the very notion is absurd.

There are clear methods to decide if a company has dominant position or not. It has nothing to do with whether you can use another one or not. Perhaps you don't have an idea what you are talking about.

You're wrong, simple as that. Being dominant simply is not enough. The FTC couldn't even make a case against Google, a far more dominant company than Facebook. You're just making shit up dude, just stop, there is no case here for anti-trust nor will there be.

>You're wrong, simple as that. Being dominant simply is not enough.

Yeah, I'm gonna bet on me and my law degree for being right about that. Whether Facebook is in a dominant position is for the court to decide.

You on the other hand are a funny... dude. Haha, "dude" he says :)

Great, get back to me when hell freezes over, because that'll happen before Facebook is ever taken down by anti-trust laws.

You frequently break the HN guidelines by being uncivil. This is not ok, and we've warned you many times before. If you keep doing it we're going to ban you, despite the fact that we (and I personally) have bent over backwards to avoid doing that.

> Facebook is a delivery channel. They do not produce editorial content so they are not allowed to have bias

That's simply not true; they're allowed to do anything they want.

Literally no one is suggesting otherwise.

You are literally incorrect as I literally quoted someone suggesting otherwise.

Where?

Try reading the post you replied to.

Yeah, I'm sure there is a congressional probe because they're allowed to do anything they want. I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg felt that he had to adress this himself because clearly they can do anything they want.

There's a congressional probe because congress is a political body putting on a show, nothing more. Facebook is a private company, they have no legal obligation to be unbiased. They may have business reasons for wanting to appear unbiased, so Zuck is simply managing the company image. Websites are not broadcast stations and don't fall under the same rules as television, calling them a delivery channel is meaningless, there's no such thing in the law.

It is hard for me to believe that one employee could show this kind of bias for this long without being noticed. It had to be more systematic and widespread. But good to see FB admitting it and taking corrective action.

It's more likely that their "liberal bias" reflected the general culture at FB and therefore seemed normal to most people.

Note that there's no need for a conspiracy or even a bias. Or even an official stated policy.

FB is ground zero for hyper holiness signalling spiral, extroverted, somewhat narcissistic, workforce automation software for the middle school girl social experience of shunning and friending and whatnot. Its has little relation to the real world, yet strangely reflects it, much like an augmented reality game like Ingress. It would be highly surprising if the tiny fraction of the population that are "whales" in terms of unusually heavy participation in such a weird activity are of a political outlook remotely similar to that of the general population.

Its like a shocking expose of the really large amount of praying going on in churches. It doesn't require a conspiracy or a mysterious pro-prayer bias. All you need for non-typical beliefs and behavior is a weird filter that keeps out most of the general population plus self selection bias and you're off to the races.

Theres probably a more general theory that the more wall clock time is spent by participants in a subculture, the less likely the subculture's values will align with, or even make sense when compared to, the main culture. Groupthink conquerors all.

I also kind of rolled my eyes at the "rogue employee" angle. I hope Facebook makes things right.

Makes things right? There are no expectations of impartiality in American media.

There's no evidence that anyone did anything wrong? They just admitted that it would be possible. This article is as sensationalist as it gets - read Glenn Beck's medium post, it's a lot better:

https://medium.com/@glennbeck/what-disturbed-me-about-the-fa...

Things are right. There's nothing wrong with Facebook having a liberal bias. Every tech company full of young smart people is going to have a liberal bias. They aren't the government, they don't have to be unbiased. Conservatism isn't exactly popular among the non-old non-white population despite any anecdotal data about young conservatives you might know. Young people and minorities skew liberal, that's just how the world is.

@voku of course there is, otherwise this wouldn't be news.

i tend to think there's a decorum aspect to things, but nobody expects mainstream news to be "unbiased" - it's the WWE of journalism. (not that alt-news or blogs are often any different.)

court cases have established that, really, "free speech" and other things end up meaning that "the news" can lie, distort and implicate whatever it wants, whenever it wants, to fantastical degrees.

This is manufactured outrage. As mentioned by abiox, in a free country, every source of news is free to lie and distort things as much as it feels like.

Facebook having an anti-conservative slant (true or not) is about as newsworthy as Fox News having an anti-reason slant. For some reason, though, there aren't too many conservative senators wringing their hands and calling for an investigation into the latter.

All this proves is that the distinction between government and private entity suppression of speech (see: that moronic XKCD cartoon) is a bullshit distinction when your communications mediums are owned by megacorps.

Actually, courts have established that the first amendment does not necessarily allow anyone to lie and distort things as much as they wish. There are limitations.

It's just that some people are better than others at skirting along that line.

Only in a very few select contexts.

1. When you have a fiduciary duty. 2. When you are on a witness stand. 3. When you are speaking to a federal agent. 4. When you are committing fraud. (See #1) 5. ???

None of these are relevant to mass media.

There is libel and slander, which are relevant to mass media.

It's more likely that there was a policy in place that allowed for some curation, and either the policy targeted a specific political subset of news for removal unintentionally, or the policy was vague enough to allow the political leanings of the people tasked with carrying it out to express themselves.

Then again, maybe it's also a matter of a specific subset of news which is often factually incorrect and associated with a political view, such as conservative reporting on climate science (not that the same isn't true for some liberal new items, but this is a fairly egregious example).

Maybe this happens when your hiring process selects against ideological diversity.

I guess everybody forgot the "what is Facebook's responsibility to stop a Donald Trump presidency?" internal messageboard question.

Having read the Washington Times before, I'm not inclined to believe a single thing they publish without corroboration.

Does the media outlet matter? They are all biased in direction or another... The fact that facebook curates their timeline tells you it's manipulated and biased. [1]

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everyt...

This is not the Washington Post. It is the Washington Times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times

  Founded in 1982 by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon, 
  the Times was owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate associated with the church until 2010, in which Moon and a group of former executives purchased the paper. It is currently owned by diversified conglomerate Operations Holdings.[

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