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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

#81

Post by sgeisenh »

redthrowaway wrote: post #59
kailuowang wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious how many of these medias actually admit that they are biased themselves?

My anecdata suggests conservative outlets tend to acknowledge their bias, as a counterweight to liberal bias in the "mainstream" media, whereas liberal outlets tend to believe themselves to be unbiased. Given how much liberal outlets scoff at the notion of there being a pervasive liberal bias in the MSM, I suspect they legitimately just don't see it as they're surrounded by people with the same political views and so…

From the perspective of an American, the American MSM has a liberal bias. From the perspective of a citizen from most other first-world countries, the American MSM has a hardcore conservative bias.

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

#83

Post by makecheck »

Or in other words: “people who chose a single source for news complained that this one source is biased”. Let’s not learn the lesson that perhaps it is a good idea to seek multiple sources so that biases are kept in check and accuracy is improved. Oh, and let’s make sure to demand that Facebook do exactly what we want since we’re not even paying for access to Facebook.

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

#85

Post by ChuckMcM »

kailuowang wrote: post #24
nostromo wrote: post #15

It's interesting how media outlets are spinning this news. People that read conservative media are left thinking that Facebook has admitted bias. People that read liberal media are left thinking the opposite. Washington Times: "Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives" LA Times: "Facebook investigation reveals no evidence of bias against conservative topics, company says" NY Times: "F…

I am curious how many of these medias actually admit that they are biased themselves?

That of course is the interesting question. Of course the media knows they are biased, some even call it out in their tag line like "The conservative voice" others are less outspoken.

Facebook is in an interesting position, they have such a wide swath of populations for reasons other than an editorial slant, they have people on site who might disagree with their position. Unlike the media where people who don't like the editorial bias of a paper simply don't read it.

It would be perfectly reasonable for Facebook to have an editorial position on the stories. But it has asserted that it does not. And that is where things get tricky. We saw on a propublica story about how the machine algorithm can get biased by poor data and assumptions, and we've seen from Facebook's media response that even when they don't have an "official" position, their employees naturally do and Facebook is seeking additional training for them to protect their biases from leaking into their curation choices.

That said, the "reality" of what is and what isn't trending is more about reinforcing one's belief in a position and less about the news. People who believe a story that strongly endorses their position but never trends is "suppressed", and stories that conflict with their opinions but are trending are "biased". I have yet to find any way to have a reasonable discussion about the popularity of views versus the correctness of those views with anyone who believes their point of view is being suppressed by "shadowy influences."

I don't think there is any way for Facebook to win here and a lot of ways it can lose.

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

#86

Post by chris_va »

mmanfrin wrote: post #70
6stringmerc wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an alternative scenario you could have the state-run media, cough insert-name-here cough , simply forcing every single outlet to run with their version of the headline: "There still is no Facebook, only use National Party Communication Gathering Website!"

Studies have found that state run media in democratic nations are the least biased. NPR, BBC.

Publically financed and state run are two very different things.

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

#87

Post by Torgo »

vkou wrote: post #47
sergiotapia wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@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.

All this proves is that the distinction between government and private entity suppression of speech (see: that moronic XKCD cartoon) is a bullshit distinction when your communications mediums are owned by megacorps.

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

#88

Post by solipsism »

nametakenobv wrote: post #50

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 channe…

Not "allowed"? By whom? I'm afraid it's you who is confused. The first amendment doesn't recognize a difference between "editorial content" and non-"editorial content". Comcast could carry only conservative channels without issue.

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

#89

Post by myko »

sergiotapia wrote: post #7
abhi3 wrote: post #4

It is hard for me to believe that one employee could show this kind of bias for this long without being noticed. It had to be more systematic and widespread. But good to see FB admitting it and taking corrective action.

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

There's no evidence that anyone did anything wrong? They just admitted that it would be possible. This article is as sensationalist as it gets - read Glenn Beck's medium post, it's a lot better:

https://medium.com/@glennbeck/what-disturbed-me-about-the-fa...

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

#90

Post by redthrowaway »

hackuser wrote: post #73
redthrowaway wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My anecdata suggests conservative outlets tend to acknowledge their bias, as a counterweight to liberal bias in the "mainstream" media, whereas liberal outlets tend to believe themselves to be unbiased. Given how much liberal outlets scoff at the notion of there being a pervasive liberal bias in the MSM, I suspect they legitimately just don't see it as they're surrounded by people with the same political views and so…

> pervasive liberal bias in the MSM The biggest cable news channel, the most popular newspaper (I think WSJ leads; EDIT: and certainly it dominates the business world), and almost all talk radio are highly conservative. They try to paint themselves as underdogs, but it's a little silly.

Yes, the big ones are conservative, because every other one is liberal. Conservatives flock to places like Fox and WSJ because they're a refuge from the liberal bias that pervades the rest of the media.

If you're a liberal and you want to watch news that doesn't offend you, you can choose from any of the major networks save Fox. If you're a conservative and want the same, you're stuck with Fox.

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