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Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives

washingtontimes.com

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Re: Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives

#41

Post by maxerickson »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #2

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.

Re: Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives

#42

Post by unlinker »

duaneb wrote: post #39
noobermin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Re: Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives

#43

Post by bpodgursky »

adamnemecek wrote: post #28
bpodgursky wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

Re: Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives

#45

Post by talmand »

Kalium wrote: post #30
bpodgursky wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives

#46

Post by siegecraft »

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?

Re: Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives

#47

Post by vkou »

sergiotapia wrote: post #11
sergiotapia wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

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.

Re: Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives

#48

Post by unlinker »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #2

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.

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.

Re: Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives

#49

Post by dreamsofdragons »

atf104 wrote: post #10

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.

Re: Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives

#50

Post by nametakenobv »

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.

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