2 ms·
having humans tagging certain stories as "not news" is not evil agenda based bias, it is spam filtering. just because a group of people start shouting about so
by basch 11y ago
having humans tagging certain stories as "not news" is not evil agenda based bias, it is spam filtering.
just because a group of people start shouting about something loudly, and the shouting gets popular, doesnt mean facebook should choose to amplify it.
for example, think of mean girls. when gretchen is trying to make fetch happen, and regina says "Gretchen, stop trying to make fetch happen! It's not going to happen!" A group of likeminded people, say republicans in this example, could be trying to make someone appear popular by shouting their name a lot, ad nauseum. that doesnt make it newsworthy outside the echo chamber.
if the republican network is more coordinated and better at discussing one topic at at time than the democrats, they can push a story higher on the trending list. people being able to manipulate the trending list through coordination isnt ideal. if you want a gamified, competitive trending list, visit twitter. letting pure popularity and activity overrule common sense is foolhearted. i have never seen facebook claim their trending list behaved like twitter (which is where it seems you are getting your ideal trending behavior concept from.)
using humans to balance the trending stories, instead of letting one ideology take it over, is a good thing. but balance doesnt always mean fair or equal. myths dont deserve equal space to debunking. intelligent design doesnt automatically deserve equal placement to more accredited theories. if something is factually wrong, facebook can remove a story from trending to prevent its spread.
plus, algorithms are going to display some kind of bias. any sort of spam filter will disfavor certain noise. is blocking viagra ads bias? algorithms written by people will lean in SOME direction. believing in unbias is naive.
- Grishnakh 11y agoBS. "Spam" is advertising; news you don't agree with is not. Yes, if Facebook users shout about something loudly and it gets popular, FB has no right to squelch that just because they disagree with it. That's censorship. If Democrat voters don't like the Republican-aimed news, FB can and should make sure their news feeds are tailored for users so that people don't see stuff from sources they think are junk and so their feeds are more tailored for them and their preferences. I have no problem with that. That's how Google News works; I can tell it to not show me news from crappy sites like Breitbart or WND. But it doesn't censor those sources against my will; if for some crazy reason I really liked those site, I could tell GN to show them to me, and I can set my preference for those sites to a higher factor. The whole key here is user choice: having some fedora-wearing hipster at Facebook telling me what I should and shouldn't be reading is asinine and condescending. Having the ability to configure my news feeds to show me what I want, and hide things I think are garbage, is absolutely correct however.
- basch 11y agoIt might be censorship if facebook were preventing people from posting the stories on each others walls. It might be suspicious if they were tuning the newsfeed algorithm to avoid the stories. But manipulating what stories make it to trending is not censorship. It seems like you are conflating the newsfeed and trending box. The newsfeed is neverending algorithmic magic, the trending box is an editorial masthead controlled "some popular things on our site", that appears in the sidebar. Facebook taking editorial control of the trending sidebar has nothing to do with your ability to configure your newsfeed to suit your desires. Also, political avocation is marketing and can be spam. Unsolicited "Vote for Ted" emails are spam in my book.