Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

[jct74]

Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

Michael Nunez
May 9, 2016

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.

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.

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.”

...

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

[timosman]

We were also regularly rejecting applicants during the interview process for the same reason. The official reason given back to the applicant was "lack of culture fit" or some other BS :D

[oyarde]

We were also regularly rejecting applicants during the interview process for the same reason. The official reason given back to the applicant was "lack of culture fit" or some other BS :D

Makes sense to me , I would not fit well within a liberal culture. I mean , who wants to be the only guy at work not taking food stamps , LOL

[staerker]

damage control, lol

http://i.imgur.com/GLmNw9n.png

[Brian4Liberty]

This was obvious during Ron Paul's 2008 run, when Zuckerberg was suppressing Ron news and trends.

[bunklocoempire]

Thanks for posting.

No! Not those guys! :eek: /s

It is an interesting "Public Relations" beast.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag

[Brian4Liberty]

Thanks for posting.

No! Not those guys! :eek: /s

It is an interesting "Public Relations" beast.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag

Very interesting expose!

[Zippyjuan]

Do people actually rely on Facebook as their main source of news?

[bunklocoempire]

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


“Facebook got a lot of pressure about not having a trending topic for Black Lives Matter.”

Posted by Mark Zuckerberg: "There have been several recent instances of people crossing out "black lives matter" and writing "all lives matter" on the walls at MPK..."

Mark Zuckergoebbels showing us how to all get along. lol

My family and FraudBook using friends will get another report about the social club they've chosen to use.

[Korean libertarian]

Who cares? I mean, who REALLY cares about those Fraudbook news?

[Lindsey]

Do people actually rely on Facebook as their main source of news?

Yes, I know a few who do.

[DamianTV]

Now, heres the big question. Does anyone think that there is not a platform that will NOT censor them? MSM, Facebook, Google, AOL, AT&T, Verizon, every big one out there will censor anything they dont like.

[timosman]

Now, heres the big question. Does anyone think that there is not a platform that will NOT censor them? MSM, Facebook, Google, AOL, AT&T, Verizon, every big one out there will censor anything they dont like.

RPF!:D

[timosman]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-trending-news-leaked-documents-editor-guidelines



Leaked documents show how Facebook, now the biggest news distributor on the planet, relies on old-fashioned news values on top of its algorithms to determine what the hottest stories will be for the 1 billion people who visit the social network every day.

The documents, given to the Guardian, come amid growing concerns over how Facebook decides what is news for its users. This week the company was accused of an editorial bias against conservative news organizations, prompting calls for a congressional inquiry from the US Senate commerce committee chair, John Thune.

The boilerplate about its news operations provided to customers by the company suggests that much of its news gathering is determined by machines: “The topics you see are based on a number of factors including engagement, timeliness, Pages you’ve liked and your location,” says a page devoted to the question “How does Facebook determine what topics are trending?”


The inside story of Facebook’s biggest setback
Read more
But the 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.

The guidelines show human intervention – and therefore editorial decisions – at almost every stage of Facebook’s trending news operation, a team that at one time was as few as 12 people:

A team of news editors working in shifts around the clock was instructed on how to “inject” stories into the trending topics module, and how to “blacklist” topics for removal for up to a day over reasons including “doesn’t represent a real-world event”, left to the discretion of the editors.
The company wrote that “the editorial team CAN [sic] inject a newsworthy topic” as well if users create something that attracts a lot of attention, for example #BlackLivesMatter.
Facebook relies heavily on just 10 news sources to determine whether a trending news story has editorial authority. “You should mark a topic as ‘National Story’ importance if it is among the 1-3 top stories of the day,” reads the trending review guidelines for the US. “We measure this by checking if it is leading at least 5 of the following 10 news websites: BBC News, CNN, Fox News, The Guardian, NBC News, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Yahoo News or Yahoo.”
Strict guidelines are enforced around Facebook’s “involved in this story” feature, which pulls information from Facebook pages of newsmakers – say, a sports star or a famous author. The guidelines give editors ways to determine which users’ pages are appropriate to cite, and how prominently.

<Leaked documents available at link>

The company’s guidelines are very similar to a traditional news organization’s, with a style guide reminiscent of the Associated Press guide, a list of trusted sources and instructions for determining newsworthiness. (The Guardian also obtained the guidelines for moderating the “in the story” feature, now called “involved in this story”; the guidelines for the company’s Facebook Paper app; and a broader editorial guide for the app.)

The guidelines are sure to bolster arguments that Facebook has made discriminatory editorial decisions against rightwing media. Conservatives would label the majority of Facebook’s primary sources as liberal.

They also appear to undermine claims this week from Facebook’s vice-president of search, Tom Stocky, who posted a statement addressing the controversy on 9 May. “We do not insert stories artificially into trending topics, and do not instruct our reviewers to do so,” he wrote.

Stocky’s statement may depend on the definition of the word “artificially”. In interviews with the Guardian, three former editors said they had indeed inserted stories that were not visible to users into the trending feed in order to make the experience more topical. All denied personal bias, but all said the human element was vital.

A second list, of 1,000 trusted sources, was provided to the Guardian by Facebook. It includes prominent conservative news outlets such as Redstate, Breitbart, the Drudge Report and the Daily Caller.

Former employees who worked in Facebook’s news organization said that they did not agree with the Gizmodo report on Monday alleging partisan misconduct on the part of the social network. They did admit the presence of human judgment in part because the company’s algorithm did not always create the best possible mix of news.

Specifically, complaints about the absence from trending feeds of news reports about clashes between protesters and police in Ferguson in 2014 were evidence to Facebook that – in the specific case of the trending module – humans had better news judgment than the company’s algorithm. Multiple news stories criticized Facebook for apparently prioritizing Ice Bucket Challenge videos over the riots. Many said the incident proved that Twitter was the place for hard news, and Facebook was a destination for fluff.

“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,” said Justin Osofsky, Facebook’s vice-president of global operations. “Facebook does not allow or advise our reviewers to systematically discriminate against sources of any political origin, period. What these guidelines show is that we’ve approached this responsibly and with the goal of creating a high-quality product – in the hopes of delivering a meaningful experience for the people who use our service.

“Trending Topics uses a variety of mechanisms to help surface events and topics that are happening in the real world. In our guidelines, we rely on more than a thousand sources of news – from around the world, and of all sizes and viewpoints – to help verify and characterize world events and what people are talking about. The intent of verifying against news outlets is to surface topics that are meaningful to people and newsworthy. We have at no time sought to weight any one viewpoint over another, and in fact our guidelines are designed with the intent to make sure we do not do so.”

[timosman]

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/05/13/watch-milo-challenges-facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-debate/


13 May 2016


Following reports that Facebook routinely censors popular conservative news stories and artificially promotes progressive causes like Black Lives Matter on its “Trending News” feature, Breitbart technology editor Milo Yiannopoulos is today challenging Mark Zuckerberg to a live debate.

Or, if Mr Zuckerberg prefers, a more traditional sit-down interview about free speech online, on Mr Zuckerberg’s own service, Facebook Live.

In a video released today, which can be seen below, Milo calls on Facebook’s chief executive to answer for the social network’s perceived bias against conservative news outlets, to explain why censorship appears to be so rampant on the network, and to challenge him about his co-operation with the German government in suppressing criticism of mass migration.

Zuckerberg indicated yesterday that he would be willing to meet with conservatives to discuss some of these issues in a Facebook post that was widely reported on. Little wonder he’s acting quickly, given that the Senate is now involved.

Facebook has heavily implied that algorithms are responsible for how the site selects “trending” stories. But reports over the last few weeks have revealed that the site is heavily dependent on human editors — editors who appear to share strong liberal biases.

A former Facebook editor specifically named Breitbart as one of the sites whose content Facebook has deprioritised in the past as part of its unofficial “blacklisting” practices.

“Breitbart is one of the most-shared sites on Facebook in the world,”said Yiannopoulos this morning. “We’ve been one of the 25 most-engaged publications on the network for 6 months in a row. Imagine how much higher our numbers would be if Facebook weren’t suppressing our content and ignoring its own users’ enthusiasm for our journalism.

“Conservatives aren’t evil, or selfish, or cruel. We’re not monsters, despite the caricatures of us in places like Silicon Valley. We just have a different vision of how to get to where we all want to go. Censoring and de-prioritising our opinions and our favourite news sources is not on,” he added.

Yiannopoulos, who edits Breitbart’s technology and social justice coverage and was recently profiled by the New York Times magazine warns that unless Facebook addresses mounting concerns of political bias, it could go the way of Twitter, with a declining stock price and “one of the angriest user bases anywhere in technology.”


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC3VJ4iRYGk

“Facebook has to do one of two things,” according to the Breitbart editor. “Either rediscover a commitment to First Amendment principles and allow its users to express themselves freely, or be honest with users about Facebook’s biases and let users know that conservatives are going to have a hard time expressing themselves. As a private company, Facebook is entitled to choose either route. But it has to start telling its users the truth.”

Speaking from a hotel gym in Eugene, OR during his year-long nationwide college speaking tour, called the Dangerous Fa9*9ot Tour, Yiannopoulos challenged Zuckerberg to explain why he is unable to even mention the name of his tour on Facebook without risking account suspension.

Yiannopoulos continued: “Sometimes the conservative route is longer, harder, less intuitive or less obvious. It doesn’t always give you a nice warm fuzzy feeling right away. But we’re not dangerous. You know what’s dangerous? Suppressing perfectly ordinary and respectable opinions because they don’t match the prejudices of your company’s curation team.”

“Facebook is the worst offender when it comes to censorship, but, unlike Twitter, which is famously opaque and never gives straight answers to questions about free speech, Facebook’s CEO yesterday announced that he would be willing to meet with influential conservatives to discuss their concerns. I hope I’m one of them,” he added.

Earlier this year, Yiannopoulos attended a White House press briefing to ask Obama’s press secretary Josh Earnest about censorship and free speech on social media, noting that the late Aaron Swartz, cofounder of reddit, believed that censorship is meaningful in respect of private companies when those private companies hold a monopoly on certain kinds of speech, or invent entirely new public spaces.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyvf3yUn5w4

Elsewhere, Yiannopoulos has become something of a free speech icon, appearing on Fox News to defend the right to be offensive and staging his Dangerous Fa66ot Tour, which will stop at 66 American campuses this year, including Rutgers, Dartmouth and Yale.

“In the last year, the cultural libertarian and free speech movements have gained huge momentum,” said Yiannopoulos. “Both resist the language policing and nannying instincts of progressive activists. Increasingly, the trendsetters are the ones out there fighting for free speech in the face of social justice warriors in the media, who are making life miserable for everyone.

“These days, to be punk rock, you have to be a libertarian or conservative. Millennials are waking up to the shortcomings of the Buzzfeed vision of the universe. Let’s see if Facebook is brave enough to get ahead of this trend and stop punishing its users for the opinions they hold and the language they use.”

Yiannopoulos is encouraging followers who want to see the debate to spread this challenge on the #TalkToMilo hashtag.

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[timosman]

http://gizmodo.com/facebook-announces-sweeping-changes-to-trending-section-1778307223



Facebook is enacting a number of changes to its trending news module following a two-week internal investigation. The company’s announcement comes in response to a letter of inquiry from the US Senate Commerce Committee (http://gizmodo.com/senate-gop-launches-inquiry-into-facebook-s-news-curati-1775767018), issued one day after Gizmodo reported on the allegations of one former “news curator” for the trending section, who alleged coworkers regularly suppressed topics of interest to conservative readers.

Facebook will no longer rely on external news websites or RSS feeds to “identify, validate, or assess the importance of trending topics” according to a statement from the company. Former news curators who spoke to Gizmodo on the condition of anonymity said that these websites and RSS feeds were sometimes used to insert trending topics into the section that were not organically trending on the site. And Facebook later stated that a select group of 10 publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Buzzfeed, were used to determine whether a story was important enough to be included in the trending section.

Facebook is also renaming some of the tools its curators use to moderate the trending news section, in order to “better reflect the real nature of the action[s].” Most notably, the “blacklisting” tool—used to block naturally trending topics from inclusion in the trending section—will be renamed “revisit.” The “injection” tool, used to insert trending topics or combine several topics into one, is also being reframed as a “topic correction” tool.

The company’s 12-page report also details the results of its internal investigation, which sought to determine whether any bias had impacted its trending news section. Facebook states that this investigation found no evidence of “systematic bias,” and that conservative and liberal topics were approved for the trending section in equal frequencies. As Gizmodo originally reported, several former news curators said they’d never been instructed to systematically suppress conservative news, but one former curator kept a running list of topics the curator felt were inappropriately blacklisted or disregarded by colleagues.

Facebook said in its report that prior to July 2015, topics could have been prevented from the trending module if they weren’t covered by major news organizations:

The investigation did reveal that—prior to July 2015—reviewers followed guidance that did not permit the acceptance of a topic if one of the first 12 posts (the “feed”) associated with that topic did not include a post from a news organization, a primary source, or a verified profile or page. This guidance may have in some instances prior to that date prevented or delayed acceptance of topics that were not covered by major news organizations.
The timeframe that Facebook investigated is vague in the company’s report. The trending news section launched in January, 2014. It appears that Facebook was only able to access data dating back to December of that year. “We could not reconstruct reliable data logs from before December 2014, so were unable to examine each of the reviewer decisions from that period,” the report says.

The report says “rates of ‘boosting,’ ‘blacklisting,’ and accepting topics have been virtually identical for liberal and conservative topics” but the report notes that the analysis only spanned the last 90 days. The former curators Gizmodo interviewed worked for Facebook from mid-2014 to December 2015.

“Despite the findings of our investigation, it is impossible to fully exclude the possibility that, over the years of the feature’s existence, a specific reviewer took isolated actions with an improper motive,” the report says.

Senator John Thune, chairman of the Senate Committee that requested information from Facebook, said in a statement that he appreciated Facebook’s efforts to seriously address the allegations. “Facebook’s description of the methodology it uses for determining the trending content it highlights for users is far different from and more detailed than what it offered prior to our questions,” Thune said.

“We now know the system relied on human judgement, and not just an automated process, more than previously acknowledged. Facebook has recognized the limitations of efforts to keep information systems fully free from potential bias, which lets credibility to its findings.”

Facebook’s General Counsel Colin Stretch said: “This process has helped us to identify valuable improvements to our service. These improvements and safeguards are designed not only to ensure that Facebook remains a platform that is open and welcoming to all groups and individuals, but also to restore any loss of trust in the Trending Topics feature.”