WASHINGTON, D.C. May 9 (DPI) – Facebook’s popular “trending” news stories are less likely to appear if they are politically conservative in nature, former employees told the technology and design blog Gizmodo. Facebook didn’t immediately deny it – and then issued a statement that it has “guidelines in place … to ensure neutrality.”

While all of that is hardly a shocker – it’s assumed that Facebook, like all sites that post news items, has its biases –  the fact that the site uses the neutral-sounding word “trending”, and will likely continue to, comes across as misleading.  The issue is hardly minor: More than 160 million Americans spend 50 minutes a day on the site, and get much of their news from it, confirming the vast reach and influence for the #1 social media site.

And, of course, most Facebook users have no idea that the trending or “most popular” news content is filtered.

Gizmodo reported the following:

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.

In other words, Facebook’s news section operates like a traditional newsroom, reflecting the biases of its workers and the institutional imperatives of the corporation. Imposing human editorial values onto the lists of topics an algorithm spits out is by no means a bad thing—but it is in stark contrast to the company’s claims that the trending module simply lists “topics that have recently become popular on Facebook.”

Reddit.com readers upvoted the Gizmodo story today. Among the most upvoted comments on the subject on Reddit today:

Facebook is probably the worst place for news a person could possibly go. It’s absolutely filled with fake hoax articles that most of my dumbshit friends actually believe

Yes, I’m a conservative. No, I don’t get my news from Facebook. Yes, Facebook has the right to suppress and promote whatever news they deem worthy. That said, I find this to be quite revealing of what FB is about. Now it is evident FB can paint the narrative. So the redditors defending this should realize they’re also being played on Reddit and FB.

Same old story. I’m moderate-left and swear by Drudge, even though his placement and wording in headlines can be incredibly misleading. Reddit, Drudge, AJ, RT, NPR and the BBC all have their pros and cons. That said I’d never rely on FB for news.

http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006