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Comment by r721 | Hacker News Reader

Quote from WSJ story:

"In late 2017, when Facebook tweaked its newsfeed algorithm to minimize the presence of political news, policy executives were concerned about the outsize impact of the changes on the right, including the Daily Wire, people familiar with the matter said. Engineers redesigned their intended changes so that left-leaning sites like Mother Jones were affected more than previously planned, the people said. Mr. Zuckerberg approved the plans. “We did not make changes with the intent of impacting individual publishers,” a Facebook spokesman said."

https://archive.md/uhZpP

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That doesn't tell us it was targeted - perhaps that's not the explicit claim the article makes, but it is certainly implied. If Facebook can't control the impressions for each ad partner, it's likely more than just Mother Jones were affected. If their algorithms are bad enough, driving people off the platform, that might also contribute to declines. (This is one major reason I no longer use FB: it can no longer serve any of the baseline purposes it was intended for, because of how poorly its feed algorithms work.)

The Verge is a Vox owned website. They do some good reporting but they’re not the most impartial.

What does an impartial website look like? How does one have a website that sees no particular group as more correct than any other?

In order to determine impartiality you have to use your brain to think through what the themes of every article coming from the paper are. An impartial source of news will be critical of both sides, a biased source of news is only critical of one.

Bias doesn't necessarily make the news wrong but it does mean the news is framed in a way to benefit one particular group or another.

There are plenty of articles that criticize "both sides" on topics where only one side has done wrong.

Check out the hill. They do a decent job of representing many different viewpoints without being alarmist. Opinion pieces are pretty clearly differentiated from reporting pieces.

apnews.com or reuters.com seem to be pretty impartial, since they are intended to be wire services.

"left-leaning sites" is not an individual publisher.

> left-leaning sites like Mother Jones

It's not clear if they are quoting the engineers here, but that sounds like an individual publisher to me.

Notice the careful wording:

>policy executives were concerned about the outsize impact of the changes on the right, including the Daily Wire

This could be reworded: the initial implementation primarily punished right-wing news organizations, especially the Daily Wire, but someone noticed and complained

>Engineers redesigned their intended changes so that left-leaning sites like Mother Jones were affected more than previously planned

Engineers decided that it would be good to censor far-left propaganda outfits like Mother Jones as well, if they were going to censor the Right, since someone complained, instead of only censoring the Right, so they changed their algorithm to be somewhat more critical of e.g. Mother Jones than the original algorithm, leaving the final implementation ... a black box that censors some political voices and not others.

Fast forward three years, to this week. Consider the NY Post Hunter Biden corruption story that hopefully you've heard about by now. Now it's clear Facebook and Twitter have no problem blocking an "individual publisher" founded in 1801 in the final weeks before an election, when anything is permitted to stop the "fascist" Donald Trump from winning another election, if said newspaper publishes information that might make Joe Biden look bad.

Who on earth thinks Mother Jones is a far left propaganda outfit?

David Corn was the first journalist to directly quote the Steele dossier in the lead-up to the 2016 election, in Mother Jones. We now know that the Steele dossier was propaganda.

Lol.

I struggle to define “propaganda,” but Mother Jones is decidedly far left.

The same person who hopes that we have read an NY Post smear article about the next president's son, perhaps.

Whatever my personal feelings on the matter, I consider the president of the us to be irrefutably "mainstream"

Literally almost everyone except you. Even my far left friends agree it is far left.

People who think Hillary Clinton was a radical communist.

> publishes information that might make Joe Biden look bad

There is credible information that this information is a part of a Russian disinformation effort to influence the campaign.

Now whether it's true or not is irrelevant. If the FBI has warned this information is suspect and is actively investigating then it is only appropriate for Facebook to err on the side of caution. Especially given we are weeks from an election.

> There is credible information that this information is a part of a Russian disinformation effort to influence the campaign.

I went looking for this and found this recent CNN article that looked promising. [1] But it does not mention any evidence (credible or otherwise) tying the laptop to Russians. It notes various weaknesses in the story, most notably that the emails were in image form, so contained no headers. But even if the emails were completely fabricated, that doesn't implicate Russians. Can you point me to the credible information you referenced?

1: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/16/politics/russian-disinformati...

> There is credible information that this information is a part of a Russian disinformation effort to influence the campaign.

Have you made this up in advance to justify the censorship, or do you have a reference?

The FBI seems to be taking that allegation seriously enough to investigate

https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/world/america-votes/biden-emai...

The FBI investigates all allegations of this nature, it is not a statement on if they are credible or not.

Yet there is no indication that that is the basis on which the story was initially slowed, and no indication that they apply that consistently.

The story was suppressed because it materials were allegedly obtained by hackers.

That is the initial story Twitter gave. It is not the claim Facebook made.

You are correct. Facebook claimed it's a bombshell too close to the elections so they need to verify with 3rd party "fact checkers".

>>Now whether it's true or not is irrelevant

No that is extremely relevant, for it to be "disinformation" it would need to be false

If the information is true, then the public should be informed about it, at the point the source is irrelevant.

I cant believe you discount or ignore corruption because was reveled by "evil Russia"

Some how I believe if the Russians where talking about Trump your sensibilities would be much different.. Not that I believe this NY Post story is some Russian plot because I dont,

I guess they should also withhold information about the existence of Hunter Biden and that he 'allegedly' worked for a Ukrainian oil company. We don't want the dear leader looking bad right before we place him on the throne. Once he's in, we can brazen it out..

This is the same party that gave us "you have to pass the law to know what is in it..." so...

You have to elect them before you know anything about them...

Seems like a good way to get the best leaders

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