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Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

gizmodo.com

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Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#111

Post by bobwaycott »

SyneRyder wrote: post #108
bobwaycott wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious: 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?

Not the OP, but I'm someone who leans libertarian, and Trending Topics is one of the reasons I deactivated my Facebook account. I wasn't interested in most of the trending stories, they were often news stories designed to make people sad or angry, and that's not what I want to feel when visiting Facebook. I couldn't find a way to hide that feature either - so like bad advertising, it was always there annoying me. I w…

Another genuinely curious:

Any chance your departure from FB coincided with that little social feed experiment they performed to see if they could manipulate people's emotions?

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#112

Post by michaelbuddy »

bobwaycott wrote: post #41

This is obviously very bad from the standpoint that the trending news section is ostensibly supposed to be organic, based on user behavior, and free of bias—except that which is inherent in the users themselves sharing things to be picked up as "trending". It appears that "trending news" has really been "curated news". Not cool at all. More concerning than trending news actually being curated news is learning that ne…

>> 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.

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.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#113

Post by [deleted] »

exabrial wrote: post #101

It really bothers me that acceptable forms of protests are now: intimidation(1), harassment(2), and subversion(this). 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... 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy

[deleted]

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#114

Post by FBGoAway »

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #77

> “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. > 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 colleagu…

Irrelevant.

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.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#115

Post by shepardrtc »

duaneb wrote: post #84
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #77

> “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. > 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 colleagu…

Just because the evidence isn't there doesn't mean there wasn't downward pressure from management. Look at the art of dodging blame as practiced by VW.

There wasn't any evidence and there wasn't any implication from the article. It's very different from the VW scandal.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#117

Post by bobwaycott »

logfromblammo wrote: post #107
bobwaycott wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious: 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?

Not the PP, but yes, I am for the most part equally pissed at anyone that injects political editorial bias into otherwise factual news. 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 ther…

Yeah, I feel you—especially on the meta-pissed point. Media consolidation really bothers me. I haven't listened to radio in years and genuinely feel a bad mood start whenever I'm around it.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#118

Post by Gratsby »

This seems like a story built specifically for a segment on Fox News where the newscasters feign shock and horror that their news topics aren't being covered by "mainstream media".

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.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#120

Post by proksoup »

cududa wrote: post #103
patrickg_zill wrote: post #61

The issue is that FB advertises itself as "conduit" or "network connection". You log in, communicate with people and the site tools, FB runs ads on your eyeballs, etc. 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".

I don't think I've looked at Facebook like that at all since they started using an algorithmic newsfeed. I was under the impression that that confirmed them as a "power broker" to pretty much everyone. If you're looking for a "utility" or "network connection" I'd direct you to app.net if they're even still in business

Twitter even, for the most part as far as I understand gives you complete control over your feed, with the (minor?) exceptions of promoted tweets and suggested followers.

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).

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