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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social networks 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 sites 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 werent popular enough to warrant inclusionor in some cases werent 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, Facebooks 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 thingbut it is in stark contrast to the companys claims that the trending module simply lists topics that have recently become popular on Facebook. These new allegations emerged after Gizmodo last week revealed details about the inner workings of Facebooks trending news teama 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 Facebooks 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 Facebooks users167 million in the US aloneare reading at any given moment. I believe it had a chilling effect on conservative news. Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending, said the former curator. This individual asked to remain anonymous, citing fear of retribution from the company. The former curator is politically conservative, one of a very small handful of curators with such views on the trending team. Id come on shift and Id discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldnt be trending because either the curator didnt recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz. The former curator was so troubled by the omissions that they kept a running log of them at the time; this individual provided the notes to Gizmodo. 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. I believe it had a chilling effect on conservative news, the former curator said. Another former curator agreed that the operation had an aversion to right-wing news sources. It was absolutely bias. We were doing it subjectively. It just depends on who the curator is and what time of day it is, said the former curator. Every once in awhile a Red State or conservative news source would have a story. But we would have to go and find the same story from a more neutral outlet that wasnt as biased. Stories covered by conservative outlets (like Breitbart, Washington Examiner, and Newsmax) that were trending enough to be picked up by Facebooks algorithm were excluded unless mainstream sites like the New York Times, the BBC, and CNN covered the same stories. Other former curators interviewed by Gizmodo denied consciously suppressing conservative news, and we were unable to determine if left-wing news topics or sources were similarly suppressed. The conservative curator described the omissions as a function of his colleagues judgements; there is no evidence that Facebook management mandated or was even aware of any political bias at work. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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