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Former Facebook workers: We routinely suppressed conservative news

BobStackFan4Life

BobStackFan4Life

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I suspect something similar has been happening with twitter, even though some hashtags like #NeverHillary do manage to occasionally break through.
Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential “trending” news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project. This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site’s users.
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Several former Facebook “news curators,” as they were known internally, also told Gizmodo that they were instructed to artificially “inject” selected stories into the trending news module, even if they weren’t popular enough to warrant inclusion—or in some cases weren’t trending at all. The former curators, all of whom worked as contractors, also said they were directed not to include news about Facebook itself in the trending module.
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These new allegations emerged after Gizmodo last week revealed details about the inner workings of Facebook’s trending news team—a small group of young journalists, primarily educated at Ivy League or private East Coast universities, who curate the “trending” module on the upper-right-hand corner of the site. As we reported last week, curators have access to a ranked list of trending topics surfaced by Facebook’s algorithm, which prioritizes the stories that should be shown to Facebook users in the trending section. The curators write headlines and summaries of each topic, and include links to news sites. The section, which launched in 2014, constitutes some of the most powerful real estate on the internet and helps dictate what news Facebook’s users—167 million in the US alone—are reading at any given moment.
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Among the deep-sixed or suppressed topics on the list: former IRS official Lois Lerner, who was accused by Republicans of inappropriately scrutinizing conservative groups; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; popular conservative news aggregator the Drudge Report; Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL who was murdered in 2013; and former Fox News contributor Steven Crowder.
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http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=Gizmodo_twitter
 
Not judging by my feed, they aren't.
 
Obviously, Facebook should not mess with the algorithms for determining what trends.

That being said, Facebook is now the media?
 
They curate the media. That's how I get much of my news because I don't watch TV news.

I've never really believed the trending section represented what was actually trending because it seemed to be skewed toward my interests, you know, like Facebook.
 
PhDeac said:
They curate the media. That's how I get much of my news because I don't watch TV news.

I've never really believed the trending section represented what was actually trending because it seemed to be skewed toward my interests, you know, like Facebook.
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Given who is doing the curating
a small group of young journalists, primarily educated at Ivy League or private East Coast universities, who curate the “trending” module
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I'm not surprised to hear someone with a PhD from Duke say that. You're likely to have a lot in common with the people doing the curating. The problem is, their skewing is not representative of other users. It is also not in line with what Facebook has claimed:
it is in stark contrast to the company’s claims that the trending module simply lists “topics that have recently become popular on Facebook.”
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I pay $20 a month for premium Facebook to have my feed curated.
 
BobStackFan4Life said:
Given who is doing the curating

I'm not surprised to hear someone with a PhD from Duke say that. You're likely to have a lot in common with the people doing the curating. The problem is, their skewing is not representative of other users. It is also not in line with what Facebook has claimed:
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I don't see what your problem is with what I said. Facebook curates the media and I never believed it actually represented what was trending.
 
PhDeac said:
I don't see what your problem is with what I said. Facebook curates the media and I never believed it actually represented what was trending.
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What I said wasn't meant as a criticism of you, just an observation as to why I think you're likely to be okay with the stories you're seeing. I suspect the people doing the curating share a similar outlook as you. But it is a criticism of Facebook.
 
conservatives cried about the news media and then built the largest reaching media organization on the planet.

and then they destroyed their Gods and voted for Trump
 
Meh. You all can just boycott Facebook like you did Target, Nike, Disney, Apple, etc. Go flex those muscles and make changes.

Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk
 
Sailor needs a reboot. Again, it's been links about Muslims in Europe or posts on liberal censorship in education for the past four months.
 
I'm glad I can blame Ivy League liberals for the Kardashian updates that plague the right side of my computer screen.
 
PhDeac said:
I'm glad I can blame Ivy League liberals for the Kardashian updates that plague the right side of my computer screen.
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"Brownsea Island, England: Study Researches Effects of Leprosy on Red Squirrel Population"

Right now I have the liberal red squirrel leprosy bias inflicting my Facebook trends -- damn you commies!
 
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