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Report: Facebook omitted conservative topics from trending list

16 points by Jerry2 11y ago

Overtonwindow 11y ago
This is not surprising in the least. Corporations control the news, and corporations have an agenda unto themselves. It matters not what the news is, it matters what the corporations allow you to know.
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shepardrtc 11y ago
A better title would be, Report: Facebook contractors omitted conservative topics from trending list The report says that it was the contractors own personal bias, not anything passed down from the company.
krapp 11y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11659676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11659676
supercanuck 11y ago
A lot of a what passes as conservative topics these days is quite bigoted and racist. I think it isn't a stretch to say that there is quite a fight going on as to what it means to be "conservative" at this point and what the "soul" of the movement is.
adrenalinelol 11y ago
This isn't good for FB. People trying to compare this to Rupert Murdoch influencing WSJ, FN, FBN, etc... are drawing a false comparison. Those outlets are actually presented as "news", FB is an entirely new paradigm which presents itself as organic, user-generated content (hence social media). If there becomes a widespread belief that the content is in some way deceptive/altered, users will become more reluctant to share their personal information on the platform (who would want to post information on FB, then have FB show said content to your friends after it's deemed the parts of it that are appropriate?), thus removing the largest single variable that contributes to FB's value. I know Mr. Zuckerberg has strong opinions on immigration (see the pop-up here: http://www.fwd.us/ http://www.fwd.us/), but he should separate his political views from his business.
andrewfong 11y ago
> Gizmodo reported that it could not determine whether curators took the same steps for stories from liberal news outlets. Seems like an important detail. There's a difference between "we omitted conservative topics because we don't want to be too political" and "we omitted conservative topics in favor of liberal ones".
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16 points by Jerry2 11y ago

This is not surprising in the least. Corporations control the news, and corporations have an agenda unto themselves. It matters not what the news is, it matters what the corporations allow you to know.

deleted 11y ago

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shepardrtc 11y ago

A better title would be, Report: Facebook contractors omitted conservative topics from trending list The report says that it was the contractors own personal bias, not anything passed down from the company.

krapp 11y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11659676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11659676

supercanuck 11y ago

A lot of a what passes as conservative topics these days is quite bigoted and racist. I think it isn't a stretch to say that there is quite a fight going on as to what it means to be "conservative" at this point and what the "soul" of the movement is.

adrenalinelol 11y ago

This isn't good for FB. People trying to compare this to Rupert Murdoch influencing WSJ, FN, FBN, etc... are drawing a false comparison. Those outlets are actually presented as "news", FB is an entirely new paradigm which presents itself as organic, user-generated content (hence social media). If there becomes a widespread belief that the content is in some way deceptive/altered, users will become more reluctant to share their personal information on the platform (who would want to post information on FB, then have FB show said content to your friends after it's deemed the parts of it that are appropriate?), thus removing the largest single variable that contributes to FB's value. I know Mr. Zuckerberg has strong opinions on immigration (see the pop-up here: http://www.fwd.us/ http://www.fwd.us/), but he should separate his political views from his business.

andrewfong 11y ago

> Gizmodo reported that it could not determine whether curators took the same steps for stories from liberal news outlets. Seems like an important detail. There's a difference between "we omitted conservative topics because we don't want to be too political" and "we omitted conservative topics in favor of liberal ones".

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