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Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

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Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#231

Just a rant because I'm sick of the hypocrisy and double standards being perpetrated by the media and ignoramuses and I guess Facebook too - Black Lives matter is a racist, anarchist organization that engages in illegitimate and illegal protests, and whoever is funding them should be investigated and stand trial for supporting terrorist organizations.

Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewars.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662331 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#232
Since 99% of "conservative" news is manufactured by corporate America, then manipulated, packaged, (Often repackaged.) and presented by Faux News, I'm actually okay with this. It may be supporters of Drumph and company learn the hard way just how almost everything we enjoy as Americans is very much at jeopardy because of Corporate America pushing their agenda and only their agenda through their media outlets. In other words, enjoy your market and real news manipulations. Drumph supporters if successful will earn it!

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#233
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isnt the point of hiring a "curator" to have people select and omit stories based on newsworthiness vs being nonstories?

I would assume this is why they hired people with journalistic backgrounds, but it looks like they should have had some more sophisticated consensus-seeking and quality control mechanisms in place.

i still dont see any report of an actual story being suppressed.

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.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#234
post #211

I hate how Silicon Valley culture makes it seem like they are all for freedom of information and how the big bad government is censoring and surveilling things from a bunch of innocent hackers (startup guys) when in reality if given the opportunity this crowd does the EXACT same thing. I have limited respect for either party

Tech companies are not immune to the negative side effects that come with large centralized institutions, even if it started in Silicon Valley. I don't believe we're ignorant to this fact. 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 v…

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Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#235
post #225

The American two-party system is so weird. It tries to condense a complex matrix of sometimes-overlapping and fluid opinion scales -- socially conservative vs. socially liberal, globalist vs. protectionist, environmentalist vs. laissez-faire capitalist, and so on -- into one binary value. And somehow people have become convinced that not only is such a binary scale meaningful, but also the only available choice. In m…

Agreed, and to me, this is a direct result of media organizations' extreme biases in America. This seems to be the missing link. I don't know of many non-American hyper-conservative media organizations that have directly tied their profit motive to how virulently their viewers believe that POV and are WILDLY successful at it.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To piggyback on this, one of the things Jonathan Haidt has shown in his work on ideological bias is that liberals are unable to accurately understand the conservative worldview, while both conservative and moderates are able to accurately explain liberal positions. 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 dif…

Part of that might be that conservatives and moderates hear the liberal opinion expressed in so many out outlets that it is fairly easy to give an accurate answer where liberals hear what liberal outlets think conservatives think which is sensationalized to gain eyeballs. I was taught to be able to argue the other sides opinion as well because then you truly understand what you believe.

Or it could be due to the fact that the current conservative movement relies on deception to push it's agenda, which makes it difficult for the average lay person to even understand what they stand for. Tax cuts marketed as economic stimulus, attacks on regulations and consumer/environmental protections marketed as 'making government more efficient', racial oppression disguised as drug/crime laws, universal health care spun as death panels, etc...

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#237

This is routine on all media sites and social networks, nothing to see here. Also way cheaper than funding a super pac am I right

Well, sort of. If you lean left-center, it's free. If you lean right-center, it's unavailable. Is this "cheaper"?

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#238

Just a rant because I'm sick of the hypocrisy and double standards being perpetrated by the media and ignoramuses and I guess Facebook too - Black Lives matter is a racist, anarchist organization that engages in illegitimate and illegal protests, and whoever is funding them should be investigated and stand trial for supporting terrorist organizations.

Found the racist

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#239

[Disclosure: I'm an ex-FB employee.] 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, b…

Crazy, there was someone who just posted a rant against BLM in response to this s3r3nity's comment and it was deleted like two minutes ago. Does HN suffer from the same censorship that Facebook does?

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#240
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Benghazi was the result of a YouTube video! 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,…

(Remember, the point was matching "empirical reality") > 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 subje…

But here's the thing: drawing the line between "conservatism" and "liberal" is arbitrary. Would you say that 100% of conservative beliefs are false and that 100% of liberal beliefs are true?

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.

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