Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 368 posts

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#301

Post by pj_mukh »

SFLemonade wrote: post #295
pj_mukh wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point being, Facebook's audience is majority international and it most of all wants to make money. If you occam's razor this, Facebook is simply presenting people with what they want to hear (a well-proven phenomenon[1]). The report has shown nothing to prove that there is some sort of committee that decides which political stances facebook is going to shove down people's throats, but we know it has MULTIPLE groups t…

I totally see what you're saying, but that's not what happened here. This was deliberate and subjective curation by a group of similarly politically minded individuals, despite the fact that the feed appeared to be organic. They were pushing a political agenda in the US.

Yes, I can see how this can be interpreted as that but I don't see any evidence of this in the report. All it says is, some un-named higher up sometimes made the call of what to show and what to not? Based on what? Liberal talking points or carefully measured clickbait titles that had previously led to more user engagement. Given their recent earnings report, what is more likely?

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#302

Post by mgalka »

throwit992 wrote: post #138

I have no great love of conservative politics, but there's a convincing argument to be made that their ideas and views are routinely suppressed by media outside of explicitly partisan media outlets (i.e. Fox News or talk radio). There are a number of studies that back up this claim. A 2008 study[0] found that 88% of journalists donate to the Democratic party. Jonathan Haidt has shown[1] that non-economics social scie…

Completely agree. Though I think the issue here is bigger than that. Journalism by its nature is subjective. So it may be bias, and that's still crummy, but at least the people consuming it know what they're getting.

Facebook, on the other hand, portrays its "trending" news as being determined objectively based on what people are sharing. That goes beyond bias to manipulative. It would be the same if Google were filtering conservative news sites out of its results.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#303

Post by Inconel »

pyoung wrote: post #297
protomyth wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its nice to see throwit992 point proven in such close proximity to the comment. Your spin doesn't reflect the beliefs of any conservative I have met. We aren't twirling mustaches here.

Except for the fact that I would describe myself as a moderate. I can empathize with the desire and need for sensible tax cuts and smaller government, but I can't support a platform that is incoherent and hypocritical. EDIT: To add a little more substance. I think the incoherence stems from the fact that the current conservative alliance is formed from approximately 3 distinct groups, with different priorities. You h…

I would describe myself as liberal, even by the already relatively liberal standards of coastal California, but I'm not sure incoherence and hypocrisy are things only the Republican party is guilty of.

I see many of the same aspects of incoherence among Democrats and you don't exactly have to look for it in the hidden trenches of the Democratic party. I certainly don't think Sen. Feinstein's views on encryption are in line with those of an open progressive society.

I see the same hypocrisy in Democrats' views on gun control, and specifically the prohibition against convicted felons exercising their constitutional right to bear arms.

I'm generally of the opinion that the criminal justice system in the US is fundamentally broken and institutionally racist/discriminatory. Going by that premise, and seeing the specific hurdles that poor people, and specifically poor black men, face in terms of selective enforcement, likelihood of being offered pretrial plea bargains, chances of conviction, and length of sentencing, I find it hard to view any laws that hope to strip citizens of their rights based on a tainted justice system as anything other than racist. And yet, these laws are broadly supported by both Democrats and Republicans.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#304

Post by dragonwriter »

Inconel wrote: post #303
pyoung wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the fact that I would describe myself as a moderate. I can empathize with the desire and need for sensible tax cuts and smaller government, but I can't support a platform that is incoherent and hypocritical. EDIT: To add a little more substance. I think the incoherence stems from the fact that the current conservative alliance is formed from approximately 3 distinct groups, with different priorities. You h…

I would describe myself as liberal, even by the already relatively liberal standards of coastal California, but I'm not sure incoherence and hypocrisy are things only the Republican party is guilty of. I see many of the same aspects of incoherence among Democrats and you don't exactly have to look for it in the hidden trenches of the Democratic party. I certainly don't think Sen. Feinstein's views on encryption are i…

> I would describe myself as liberal, even by the already relatively liberal standards of coastal California, but I'm not sure incoherence and hypocrisy are things only the Republican party is guilty of.

An electoral system that can naturally support only two substantially competitive parties guarantees that parties that cannot maintain incoherence will also not be major parties. While the electoral system empirically does reduce the significant axes of variation of political vies in the population [1], it doesn't reduce it so far as to actually fit on the one-dimensional axis implied by a two-party system. So the major parties must be incoherent to be competitive.

[1] See, Arendt Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy for research on this.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#305

Post by dragonwriter »

throwit992 wrote: post #138

I have no great love of conservative politics, but there's a convincing argument to be made that their ideas and views are routinely suppressed by media outside of explicitly partisan media outlets (i.e. Fox News or talk radio). There are a number of studies that back up this claim. A 2008 study[0] found that 88% of journalists donate to the Democratic party. Jonathan Haidt has shown[1] that non-economics social scie…

> I have no great love of conservative politics, but there's a convincing argument to be made that their ideas and views are routinely suppressed by media outside of explicitly partisan media outlets (i.e. Fox News or talk radio).

Fox News is not "explicitly partisan", they are purportedly neutral ("Fair and Balanced").

They are widely recognized as extraordinarily partisan, but that's different than "explicitly partisan".

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#306

Post by colejohnson66 »

pdeuchler wrote: post #263
some-guy wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing wrong with that -- as HN readers we can flag / downvote comments and perform our own collective self-censorship (for better or worse).

except when HN readers flag comments they show up as dead and are in grey text, whereas this was entirely deleted

The poster can delete their post within 2 hours, right?

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#307

Post by dragonwriter »

marknutter wrote: post #239
s3r3nity wrote: post #214

[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?

Sometimes, HN commenters realize that their own comment was ill-considered and use the "delete" link on the comment to eradicate the ill-considered post.

Since the basic, overt user-facing functionality of the site can explain the action without invoking heavy-handed moderation, I see no reason to suspect the latter.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#308

Post by Grishnakh »

basch wrote: post #299
Grishnakh wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please. When I see "trending stories", that implies that the stories are popular, not that they've been manually selected or filtered by some unelected group with an obvious bias and agenda. As for porn, if the site clearly states that that's something they censor, that's fine. Lots of sites do that. But yes, the whole name "trending stories" absolutely does imply an "organic popular list". If you "know" that this…

i see no implication of interventionless "most popular." especially on facebook. each person's trending stories could be different and be presented based on what it thinks is popular AND applicable to you. all i see is "here is a subsample of some of our most popular stories." do you and your friends have the same trending stories at the same time? cuz i get regional stories. im sure my friends in other regions dont…

>especially on facebook. each person's trending stories could be different and be presented based on what it thinks is popular AND applicable to you.

I would agree that this is a fair assumption to make about how it should work.

>cuz i get regional stories. im sure my friends in other regions dont get those stories.

Yes, that's no different than Google News. That's an entirely fair thing to do: tailor a person's feed for their preferences and locality.

>it is quite obviously targeting me based on something besides a global trending list.

Yes, and as long as it's unbiased, there's no problem with that. Especially if users can configure it (maybe I'd really like to see local news items from my hometown, for instance).

However, if they're intentionally omitting news feed items because they don't like them, that's wrong. Omitting news feed items from your feed because you don't live in Laramie, Wyoming and these items are only of interest to locals there is one thing; omitting items because they're of interest to a political group that you don't care for is entirely another.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#309

Post by dang »

marknutter wrote: post #239
s3r3nity wrote: post #214

[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?

It's still here, but we detached it and marked it off-topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662530.

Re: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

#310

Post by Terr_ »

tormeh wrote: post #249
pj_mukh wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it's a result of the voting system. It will never change unless the Constitution changes. The best you can hope for without constitutional change is something like Britain; i.e. still a two-party system but less extreme differences. I think the extreme differences in the US vs the UK is less because of the media (british media is nastier than US in many ways) and more because UK society is more unified.

> It will never change unless the Constitution changes.

Not necessarily, there's still quite a lot of wiggle-room: Except for some narrow areas (Electoral College, impeachment, vacancies, etc.) the Constitution doesn't narrowly define votes as single data-points.

If nothing else, individual states can use "better than plurality" systems to determine their picks for State and Federal legislature.

Post reply on HN