The Senate Is Launching An Inquiry Into Facebook's Trending News — Here's What's Going On
Last Monday, Gizmodo published a scoop where anonymous former "curators" who worked on Facebook's trending news module reported that they had suppressed trending conservative topics and outlet, which sparked the Senate to launch an inquiry. Last Thursday, The Guardian attained documents showing that Facebook's Trending News section (advertised as created heavily by machine) is actually mostly curated by editors. Facebook followed up by publishing the full set of documents on its blog.
The Gist Of Gizmodo's Scoop
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.
[Gizmodo]
What The Guardian's Documents Showed
…[T]he documents show that the company relies heavily on the intervention of a small editorial team to determine what makes its "trending module" headlines — the list of news topics that shows up on the side of the browser window on Facebook's desktop version. The company backed away from a pure-algorithm approach in 2014 after criticism that it had not included enough coverage of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, in users' feeds.
Facebook Later Published A Full Copy Of The Guidelines On Its Blog
The Trending Topics team is governed by a set of guidelines meant to ensure a high-quality product, consistent with Facebook's deep commitment to being a platform for people of all viewpoints. Our goal has always been to deliver a valuable experience for the people who use our service. The guidelines demonstrate that we have a series of checks and balances in place to help surface the most important popular stories, regardless of where they fall on the ideological spectrum.
[Facebook]
The Republican National Committee Seized On The Story
With 167 million US Facebook users reading stories highlighted in the trending section, Facebook has the power to greatly influence the presidential election. It is beyond disturbing to learn that this power is being used to silence view points and stories that don't fit someone else's agenda.
[GOP]
The Senate Is Launching An Inquiry
"If Facebook presents its Trending Topics section as the result of a neutral, objective algorithm, but it is in fact subjective and filtered to support or suppress particular political viewpoints, Facebook's assertion that it maintains a 'platform for people and perspectives from across the political spectrum' misleads the public," [Sen. John] Thune wrote. Thune asked Facebook a number of related questions, including whether news curators did manipulate the contents of the Trending Topics section, and what are the guidelines involved. As chairman of the committee, Thune could force Facebook executives to testify.
Thune's Full Letter
[Via Talking Points Memo]
But The Senate Probably Can't Actually Do Anything
To be clear, Facebook can do whatever it likes with any aspect of its social network, including control what it shows to users, as it did in a controversial emotion-manipulation study in 2011. So the Senate committee's letter here is strategic posturing. It's designed to put pressure on Facebook and show that people in positions of political power are paying attention to the matter, even if there's nothing the body can do to legislate the company's editorial neutrality.
And In The Past, Thune Has Argued Against Regulating How Publishers Present Issues
Mark Zuckerberg Has Reportedly Invited A Handful Of Conservative Media Figures To Meet Wednesday
Glenn Beck says that Zuckerberg reached out to assure conservative media that biased story selection wouldn't happen again.
Some 12 "conservative thought leaders" will join the meeting with Zuckerberg on Wednesday, a Facebook spokesman said. Among the invitees are media personality Glenn Beck, Fox News Channel's "The Five" co-host Dana Perino and Zac Moffatt, co-founder of Targeted Victory, a technology company that aims to bring transparency to media buying.
[Reuters]
Facebook Has Defended Itself In A Statement (Published On Facebook, Of Course)
Facebook does not allow or advise our reviewers to systematically discriminate against sources of any ideological origin and we've designed our tools to make that technically not feasible. At the same time, our reviewers' actions are logged and reviewed, and violating our guidelines is a fireable offense.
And Prominent Conservative Site RedState Said It Never Noticed Unfair Treatment
Let me just say this at the outset: we at RedState have certainly never observed any of the behavior that is alleged in the article being targeted at us, specifically. So far as we are concerned, we have had a good and healthy working relationship with Facebook and our Facebook reps. We understand that we are categorized by Facebook as "advocacy" rather than "news," which the exact same way Google characterizes us. We aren't CNN, and we don't really expect to be treated like CNN – but we would hope that Facebook would treat us equivalently with similar left-leaning outlets: if TPM is "news" then so are we.
[RedState]
It's Unclear How Widespread The Issue Actually Was
To be clear, there is no concrete evidence of systemic bias at Facebook. The "trending" box regularly includes news about conservative news sources. But it is possible that some individual workers may have rejected specific stories. Monday's report advanced a long-held view among some prominent conservatives that tech giants like Facebook are stacking the deck against them.
And Algorithms Do A Lot Of The Work Behind The Trending News Module
Facebook shows you things in your Trending line-up the same way it shows you things in your News Feed: Algorithms. It takes into account a few personal things, like where you live and what Pages you follow. But primarily it looks for two broader signals: Topics that are being mentioned a lot and topics that receive a dramatic spike in mentions.
[Recode]
In Any Case, Facebook Didn't Dare Censor This Story
