Facebook accused of bias against conservative news topics and websites
- 8 years ago
NEW YORK CITY — Former editors who curated news at Facebook say they were told to actively suppress conservative topics and news sources from trending, and now the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee is demanding a hearing.
Gizmodo broke the story this week. According to the report, former editors who worked in Facebook’s New York offices curated trending news topics and were ordered to suppress stories on conservative subjects such as CPAC, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, among others. In addition, they were told they couldn’t link to news sites such as RedState, Breitbart, Newsmax and the Drudge Report.
The editors were sometimes asked to promote stories Facebook thought deserved more attention, such as reports on Syria and the Black Lives Matter movement. Editors were barred from including any stories about Facebook itself.
Facebook has portrayed trending news as algorithmically selected ie the feed is meant to reflect what users viewers are paying attention to at any given moment in time.
Facebook in a statement denied it manipulated content. Senator John Thune, a republican from South Dakota, in a letter asked Facebook to describe what it is doing to investigate Gizmodo’s claims.
Gizmodo broke the story this week. According to the report, former editors who worked in Facebook’s New York offices curated trending news topics and were ordered to suppress stories on conservative subjects such as CPAC, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, among others. In addition, they were told they couldn’t link to news sites such as RedState, Breitbart, Newsmax and the Drudge Report.
The editors were sometimes asked to promote stories Facebook thought deserved more attention, such as reports on Syria and the Black Lives Matter movement. Editors were barred from including any stories about Facebook itself.
Facebook has portrayed trending news as algorithmically selected ie the feed is meant to reflect what users viewers are paying attention to at any given moment in time.
Facebook in a statement denied it manipulated content. Senator John Thune, a republican from South Dakota, in a letter asked Facebook to describe what it is doing to investigate Gizmodo’s claims.