Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by digi_owl » Tue, May 24, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

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.

Thats because those things avoid PR shitstorms.

You see the same thing with what Reddit has on their default front page.

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

#32

Post by MisterBastahrd » Tue, May 24, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

Aelinsaar wrote: post #3

"But with nearly two-thirds of Facebook users saying they get at least some of their news from the online platform, conservatives said any chance of bias could skew political conversations." Two-thirds... get at least some ... Ooookay? I'm not sure at what point we're all supposed to start running around with our hair on fire. Am I supposed to pretend that the much smaller number of people who rely on Facebook for th…

They still haven't shown that there's any sort of anti-conservative bias. Finding a trending topic and using the best source available to represent the information is not the same thing as bias. Conservative sites are, by definition, not the best sources available.

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

#33

Post by jklinger410 » Tue, May 24, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

"News" organizations who can barely report on the temperature outside without it dripping with bias who use their platform to push their agendas are stoking anger against another platform for being biased?

It's very beneficial for news media to oust social media as bias. This was a con job from the beginning.

I've never even looked at the "trending" section, anyway. So I guess this is yet another happening in modern American society which is generalized to imply societal importance but that really boils down to idiots yelling at other idiots.

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

#34

Post by abiox » Tue, May 24, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

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.

i tend to think there's a decorum aspect to things, but nobody expects mainstream news to be "unbiased" - it's the WWE of journalism. (not that alt-news or blogs are often any different.)

court cases have established that, really, "free speech" and other things end up meaning that "the news" can lie, distort and implicate whatever it wants, whenever it wants, to fantastical degrees.

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

#35

Post by ProAm » Tue, May 24, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #18

Having read the Washington Times before, I'm not inclined to believe a single thing they publish without corroboration.

Does the media outlet matter? They are all biased in direction or another... The fact that facebook curates their timeline tells you it's manipulated and biased. [1]

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everyt...

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

#36

Post by maxerickson » Tue, May 24, 2016, 5:15 PM UTC

randomgyatwork wrote: post #12

It's always a "rogue employee"

It's also sort of believable that it would be people doing their own thing rather than a huge, fairly well run corporation doing something transparently stupid. The controversy probably isn't costing Facebook much, but it isn't doing them any good either, and it's pretty easy to predict that coloring the feed will piss people off.

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

#37

Post by talmand » Tue, May 24, 2016, 5:16 PM UTC

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…

Oddly enough there's enough leeway that they are all correct, from a certain point of view.

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

#38

Post by xenophonf » Tue, May 24, 2016, 5:16 PM UTC

firasd wrote: post #23

I started using this Chrome extension to block Facebook trends: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/block-facebook-tre... I checked the source and it just seems to grab the div and set the style to hidden. It's not perfect, because when I open Facebook sometimes Trends are visible for a second, but it's much better than glancing at the section and being drawn into clicking on whatever celebrity news or other he…

FB Purity goes a lot further as far as customizing the Facebook UI. I heartily recommend it!

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

#39

Post by duaneb » Tue, May 24, 2016, 5:16 PM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #27

kailuowang wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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).

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

#40

Post by MichaelGG » Tue, May 24, 2016, 5:16 PM UTC

aerlinger wrote: post #16

You can't give employees the power to filter content then label them as "rogue" when a bias inevitably emerges. Obviously any innate biases (overt or not) will influence what gets filtered.

Exactly. This outcome was clear. FB handled this astonishingly poorly and now it looks like they were lying the whole time. Which honestly I'd probably true since it's so obvious that personal bias would enter.