YOU WON’T READ THIS ON FACEBOOK
Site censors the news
Facebook, which reaches millions of readers with its “trending” news, would remove conservative topics from its feed, former curators told the Web site Gizmodo. There was a list of topics and news outlets that would be downplayed even if they were popular.
Here’s something Facebook employees don’t want you sharing — conservative news.
Workers for the site regularly prevented popular stories on conservative issues from showing up in its widely read “trending” news section — even if they actually were trending, the tech-news site Gizmodo reported Monday.
“Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending,” a former journalist who worked as a “news curator” for the site told Gizmodo.
“I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz.”
The ex-worker said he kept a list of suppressed topics, which included Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the Drudge Report and murdered Navy SEAL Chris Kyle.
“I believe it had a chill effect on conservative news,” said the former curator, who identified himself as one of the few conservatives on the trending team.
Another ex-curator also told Gizmodo that Facebook avoided putting stories from right-wing news sources in the trending box, even if they were designated as trending by the network’s algorithm.
“It was absolutely bias. We were doing it subjectively. It just depends on who the curator is and what time of day it is,” the ex-curator said.
“Every once in a while, 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 wasn’t as biased.”
Other ex-workers said the trending team was told to include some stories that were not actually trending but deemed important — including Black Lives Matter.
“If it looked like it had enough news sites covering the story, we could inject it — even if it wasn’t naturally trending,” said one of the former curators.
Facebook issued a statement saying it takes allegations of bias “very seriously.”
“There are rigorous guidelines in place for the review team to ensure consistency and neutrality,” it said.
“These guidelines do not permit the suppression of political perspectives. Nor do they permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over another. These guidelines do not prohibit any news outlet from appearing in Trending Topics.”