15 ms·

Facebook relies on editors' judgment for trending news feed, documents show

159 points by protomyth 11y ago

notliketherest 11y ago
I've said much about this topic, as you can see in my comments. I've since thought about what should be done and I've come to a simple conclusion: Facebook is Mark Zuckerburg's business and enterprise. He can do with it what he wants, just as any business or enterprise has the right to conduct their own business. If he wants to use it to push the a globalist and left agenda, by all means he has the right to do that. It's up to us, the consumer, to vote with our feet. I haven't used Facebook in years and I'm certainly glad not to be using it now that this comes to light as I disagree with it's agenda. Does anyone have an alternative argument as to why Facebook DOES NOT have the RIGHT to suppress and promote information based on it's own agenda?
- jbob2000 11y ago
  You know, I really doubt that Mark wakes up in the morning, meets with his editing team, and says "guys, we need to push the globalist left agenda". The company is massive, so to say that he has some kind of finger on a "left agenda" button is way over simplifying things.
  - sbuttgereit 11y ago
    And yet, in essence, the OP could be right, too. Most of us simply cannot know how Mark or various of his minions (at whatever level) choose to use the various soap boxes they have at their disposal. Rather than oversimplifying, I think the OP is more likely correct and I fully expect Mark and team to wake up in the morning wondering how they can use their privileged access to many millions of users to advance whatever agenda they are supporting that day (political or economic); within some limits of "seemliness", of course. I expect them to act on those thoughts, too. Perhaps it is an oversimplification to bundle ideologies into a monolithic "left" and "right"; reality there is more complex than that. However, for the purposes of generalization it's not unreasonable to group people together when many of their ideologies bear resemblance to the archetypes of political division. To be overly literal about that is, itself, being overly simplistic.
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    It's more like this: people in tech for the most part have similar political views, so similar that they almost seem common sense. Take LGBTQ rights. Safe to say Silicon Valley is more pro than con on this issue (and benefits from having a larger and more diverse talent pool), so it is easy to see that perspective being the "correct" side of the argument and seeing the other side as mean-spirited, bigoted, on the wrong side of history...you get the idea.
  - eplanit 11y ago
    There is evidence that he actually does decidedly (and within his rights) promote the "left agenda". He's been pushing Black Lives Matter within the company, and anyone who expresses disagreement irks him[1]. [1] http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/02/26/467985384/zuckerberg-tells-facebook-staff-to-stop-crossing-out-black-lives-matter http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/02/26/467...
    - EdHominem 11y ago
      Not true at all. He's been calling out people who vandalize messages they don't like - in particular, BLM.
    - larubbio 11y ago
      I think if you read that article, he isn't pushing 'Black Lives Matter', but rather asked employees to stop crossing it out and writing 'All Lives Matter' His quote from that article explains it "'Black lives matter' doesn't mean other lives don't. It's simply asking that the black community also achieves the justice they deserve. We've never had rules around what people can write on our walls — we expect everybody to treat each other with respect. Regardless of the content or location, crossing out something means silencing speech, or that one person's speech is more important than another's." There may be other cases of him pushing the "left agenda" but I don't think the article you link shows it.
      - ars 11y ago
        > 'Black lives matter' doesn't mean other lives don't. Ha! Yes, actually it does mean that. Otherwise you would not single out a single group as more deserving of life than others. When you call out a specific thing in your argument, you do that to specifically exclude other similar items.
        solipsism 11y ago
        > Otherwise you would not single out a single group as more deserving of life than others. It doesn't say "Black lives matter more than others." Everyone who understands why it's "Black Lives Matter!" instead of "All Lives Matter!" also understands why you think it should be "All Lives Matter!", we just disagree. There's no subtlety to your point, it's blunt and easy to understand. The difference is, people who think it should be "All Lives Matter!" don't understand why we think it should be "Black Lives Matter!". There's a nuanced point that you don't seem to understand. When you suggest that we're saying black lives matter more than any other lives, you make it clear that you don't get it. This is fine, if you stop misrepresenting the intentions of others they might be willing to explain it to you. Edit: And by the way, you don't have to agree with it the nuanced point in order to understand it. So Zuck insisting people not cross out "Black Lives Matter" is not him pushing that as an agenda -- it's just him showing an understanding that "Black Lives Matter!" is not the same as "White Power!"
  - rdancer 11y ago
    Facebook is, as an institution, proud to have ignited national revolutions and shaped policy debates. I doubt Mr Zuckerberg doesn't do that.
- tormeh 11y ago
  >Does anyone have an alternative argument as to why Facebook DOES NOT have the RIGHT to suppress and promote information based on it's own agenda? The power Facebook has. Power needs to be controlled. As a lefty-ish person I'm not up in arms about this, but I see the problem.
  - TrevorJ 11y ago
    I think they do have that right, however, the issue is they SAY the stories are 'trending' when in fact they are simply curated by facebook. That needs to be made clear. Passing off curated content as 'trending' is like simply making up polling data and passing it off as public opinion when in fact it's not.
    - morgante 11y ago
      Who says algorithms are the only possible determinants of something which is trending? The article specifically points out that human editors were introduced after Facebook failed to surface Ferguson protests—making it look bad because those protests were in fact trending on Twitter. Moreover, some theoretical perfect algorithm could have asserted that was a trending topic. In fact, there is not perfect algorithm for determining what is "trending." Part of hiring human curators is to train an algorithm which can more effectively use judgement in figuring out topics which are truly trending/newsworthy/interesting instead of coincidentally used a lot without being valuable (ex. #FollowFriday). Moreover, it seems clear that injecting stories is actually relatively rare. The primary reason to have human curators is to do filtering to prevent the junk from showing up in trending.
      - TrevorJ 11y ago
        I think your argument is really grasping at straws and completely ignores the plain meaning of the words in question.
  - jjbiotech 11y ago
    >Power needs to be controlled By whom? I'm legitimately asking this as a lefty-ish person.
- popmystack 11y ago
  If you read the article, nothing was being "suppressed". The sources mentioned are extremely tabloid-esque in nature. This is only biased if we can provide concrete evidence that similar tabloid-esque publications that happened to align "left" of the political spectrum in the U.S. were allowed to pass while their political counterparts were passed up. If the standard for journalism remained constant, but the sources that were "suppressed" largely happen to be conservative that doesn't seem like a problem with curation, it seems like a problem for the conservative media ecosystem. I fully expect, despite adhering to basic scientific principles, to be downvoted yet again in this thread, because I already see a lot of the same names from the last time this article was posted and politically charged rhetoric (i.e. "leftist agenda").
  - scholia 11y ago
    The "conservative media ecosystem" in the USA is detached from reality. That was vividly illustrated by the shock at Fox News when Obama won in 2012. They evidently believed enough of their own lies that they couldn't handle the truth. If Fox News had actually reported the truth all the way through the campaign, they would not have been surprised. http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2012/nov/07/barack-obama-fox-news-election http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2012/nov/07/barack-oba...
    - at-fates-hands 11y ago
      The ironic part about your statement is the fact that the Republicans took back both houses of congress in the mid-terms. Even if they were detached from reality, I'd say that was a huge punch in the nuts for the Democrats after re-electing their president to a second term, and holding a super majority for 2 years. You wanna know why Donald Trump has swept the Republican establishment? Because after all the promises by the Republicans about what they were going to do after being elected, they've done almost nothing they promised and their constituents are pissed and sending a message - time for the establishment to go. It doesn't matter if Trump wins or not. The message has been sent, and if the "establishment Republicans" don't get it, and get in line, then they might as well hand the Presidency back over to the Clinton political machine.
- gozur88 11y ago
  >Facebook is Mark Zuckerburg's business and enterprise. He can do with it what he wants, just as any business or enterprise has the right to conduct their own business. It may be a little nit-picky to point it out, but in the general sense this isn't true. As soon as the company went public it stopped being Mark Zuckerburg's business and enterprise, becoming instead the property of the shareholders who employ Zuckerburg to look after their company. Zuckerburg owns less than 30%.
  - shostack 11y ago
    Doesn't his share class factor pretty heavily into that statement though?
    - gozur88 11y ago
      Hmmmm. This is a pretty interesting (and unusual) story, now that I look into it. Part of the arrangement when FB went public is some of the larger investors ceded him irrevocable proxy rights for their shares, giving him over 50% of the votes even though he owns only 28.2% of voting shares. It's not so much a difference in share classes as a sort of side deal. http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/01/zuck-power-play/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/01/zuck-power-play/ But the point remains, even if it's kind of technical when he can always outvote everyone else. He can't treat the company as his personal fiefdom if it crosses the legal interests of other shareholders. If he goes too far they can probably sue successfully.
- scholia 11y ago
  Facebook dropped algorithmic news curation "after criticism that it had not included enough coverage of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, in users’ feeds". Its current "agenda" is based on reputable news sources, plus Fox News (1): "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." I'd say that was a fair reflection of mainstream media. If you object to those, what's your personal agenda based on, and how mainstream is it? (1) Fox News has specifically said in court that it is not required to be truthful.
  - extra88 11y ago
    I agree that it's a reasonable list for U.S. news. Yahoo is a weird one to have on the list, do they do any original reporting (of real news, not entertainment)? Maybe they're a reliable source of AP or other newswire services.
    - eropple 11y ago
      Yahoo has a pretty strong sports reporting group. They have many of the heavy hitters in basketball media, for example. It makes sense to me that they'd be a common source. (If you're gonna be That Guy and hurr about sports being entertainment, you can pass.)
    - scholia 11y ago
      You're right, it's a reliable source of newswires. I don't think it does any original news reporting.
    - nommm-nommm 11y ago
      Alexa ranks Yahoo News the 8th most popular news source on the Internet. More popular than Fox News, BBC, and WSJ. As previously mentioned their sports coverage is superb. Yahoo has at least experimented with original content but I am not sure if they still have it. http://www.alexa.com/topsites/category/Top/News http://www.alexa.com/topsites/category/Top/News
  - 11y ago
- at-fates-hands 11y ago
  >> He can do with it what he wants, just as any business or enterprise has the right to conduct their own business. Unless you're a publicly traded company, which Facebook is. Then you are beholden to the people who are invested in your company; some of which I would assume are probably conservative and right leaning. If FB was still a private company, then yeah, your sentiment holds true. All bets are off when you're a publicly traded and funded company. At that point, it's the investors who tell you what the direction of the company is. Don't like it? Then buyout all the shareholders and return your company back to the private realm.
  - larubbio 11y ago
    Do you need to buyout all the investors or just enough to give you > 50% (Which Zuck already controls doesn't he?)
- hackuser 11y ago
  > He can do with it what he wants, just as any business or enterprise has the right to conduct their own business. We all have legal rights to do things that are morally wrong. He has a resposibility to the world to be a responsible citizen, just as we all do. Prior and current generations of responsible citizens are mostly responsible for Facebook: Without generations of people doing the responsible thing, even dying, for democracy, liberty, science and technlogy, education, infrastructure, law, etc. ... he'd be living in a country and world where there would be no technology, legal rights, literacy, or many other things necessary to Facebook.
- ta_donk_gt 11y ago
  Sure, FB can push any agenda they want. The issue is the deception. The product is marketed as organic and representative, and a number of people are indicating this is not actually the case. I'm not real familiar with current law around this type of behavior, so of its legality I have no idea. What I would compare it to though are other deceptive business marketing practices like photoshopping before and after pics for weight-loss products, or marketing your dog food as premium, all natural meat based when it is in fact the same junk, bought from the same supplier, as another dog food brand that costs half as much (and is specifically called out as inferior in commercials). At the least, even if not criminal, it would seem to open the door to civil lawsuits.
- onewaystreet 11y ago
  Facebook isn't being accused of pushing an agenda. The accusations are against a few of their hired contractors.
fullshark 11y ago
That's better than simply optimizing for clicks probably.
- jonathankoren 11y ago
  What makes you think it's not?
untilHellbanned 11y ago
I'm actually serious when I say this a huge opportunity for Twitter. Twitter has the possibility for so much randomness, which I would say is good for the health of the world. Its a public free for all. Facebook, as Stratchery [1] and others have said, facilitates a group think world. You interact with your friends who all think like you. I'm an investor in Facebook and no longer one in Twitter, but I can't think of anything more I'd like than to lose than my money on Facebook. 1. https://stratechery.com/2016/the-real-problem-with-facebook-and-the-news/ https://stratechery.com/2016/the-real-problem-with-facebook-...
- hammock 11y ago
  Twitter is already more overt than Facebook about its left-leaning censorship. Cf. the Trust & Safety Council, shadowbanning tweets and accounts, de-verifying accounts, and manipulating trending topics in a similar way to Facebook
  - JoshTriplett 11y ago
    I don't know about how Twitter selects "trending topics". But I find it strange that a "Trust & Safety Council" and other tools to help protect people could be considered "left-leaning". I'm pretty allergic to politics, especially politics being injected where it doesn't belong, but I'm just not seeing the connection there.
    - rdancer 11y ago
      It's the other way 'round. Someone has a pragmatic stance on something, and the SJWs label it as political, and ban it. They also ban or not ban people because of their politics. It's one thing to ban all politics, another banning just those you oppose (and bonus if it's just an excuse and the real reason is money or connections). You don't have to look further than Twitter for examples of all of the above.
      - JoshTriplett 11y ago
        None of what you just said has anything to do with Twitter having a "Trust & Safety Council", or taking other steps to help users protect themselves.
sjg007 11y ago
And Fox News is totally unbiased.
- at-fates-hands 11y ago
  This is probably the worst fucking argument I've ever heard. If you're dismissing Fox News as being biased, then you need to eject all the rest of the MSM coverage too; because they're equally biased if not worse. Fuck, MSNBC doesn't even try and hide the fact they're on the Democratic team, it's practically their own propaganda tool for God's sake. I'll gladly take a little news from a source that's not obviously pitching me the Democratic talking points night in and night out.
  - scholia 11y ago
    If you check Politifact http://www.politifact.com/ http://www.politifact.com/ you'll find that most of what Clinton says is mostly true, whereas practically everything Trump says is mostly false. Fox, like Trump, doesn't feel the need to tell the truth. MSM (1) generally does. (1) For Facebook, MSM means: "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."
    - protomyth 11y ago
      Politifact isn't seen as nonpartisan. The Tampa Bay Times is the parent org and they have not endorsed any Republican candidates for President. They are a liberal newspaper and that is reflected in their fact assessments.
      - jonathankoren 11y ago
        Well, reality has a well known liberal bias.
        rdancer 11y ago
        If that were so, would liberal arguments need to turn to unsourced verisimilitudes?
tn13 11y ago
Lawyers, journalists (or in general humanities student) tend to be liberal in my opinion. You can employ them and expect them to be neutral. Self employed people, farmers etc. tend to be more conservative generally. You cant employ journalists and expect them to be neutral. I had always seen facebook's Trending section as "The Politically Liberal Outrage" section right from the start. I thought it was "intended to be liberal outrage" to begin with. Algorithmic trending based on what is popular with human filters to weed out only NSFW stuff appears to be the way to go forward. I cant blame facebook. We live in a world where if a company's experimental AI classified black people as monkeys we somehow think that is racist and make the company stop those AI efforts. In reality a truly neutral platform would trend what is really trending, if it is racist slur so be it because then the media is truly holding mirror to the society. That is how we might get better. Else everything becomes one large safe space which is death of intellectual speech.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
salimmadjd 11y ago
Given the history of propaganda and how we got into the Iraq war, this is an area of real major concern for me. On two different occasions I've noticed a similar behavior on a "trending" news topic that was not trending anywhere. Both cases (surprisingly) that caught my eyes, had to do with vilification of Iran. The first time, I assumed a certain organized PR effort or perhaps it was naturally trending. However, the second time (May 9th) [0] it coincided with the Gizmodo's article coming out. That prompted me to search all major news sites (with the logic that if it was on some major news sites it will then circulate within FB and will explain why it was trend). So I decided to document this, I checked CNN, HuffingtonPost, NYTimes, WashingtonPost...no mention of an "Iranian missile test" but there was a small blurb at the bottom of the FoxNew site [1]. Not enough exposure for it to get the kind of volume to be the top-3 trending story. [0] http://imgur.com/UNRBrRu http://imgur.com/UNRBrRu [1] http://imgur.com/1f13R80 http://imgur.com/1f13R80
- spenvo 11y ago
  Facebook's opaque blend of personalized algos and editorial decision-making means it can never be truly pinned down on what it shows you
  - arcticfox 11y ago
    How are you so sure [1] is promoted? That would be a HUGE scandal if it was. IMO, bigger than this trending topics issue.
    - spenvo 11y ago
      Hey, there isn't any way for me to be sure -- after some digging -- looks like a "sponsored" label is necessary [0] -- i've amended my comment. [0] - https://www.facebook.com/business/help/community/question/?id=1060144240714352 https://www.facebook.com/business/help/community/question/?i...
- ProAm 11y ago
  > Given the history of propaganda and how we got into the Iraq war, this is an area of real major concern for me. This is how the news media has operated in the US for almost all of its existence. I wouldnt be too concerned about it, just take news you read with a grain of salt.
emblem21 11y ago
News organizations classify themselves as social networks to bypass FCC regulations, blogs at 11.
- harryh 11y ago
  Exactly which FCC regulations do you think have been bypassed here?
  - rdancer 11y ago
    I never imagined there would be any regulation for cable networks content, but apparently the FCC has come up with a host[1]. The equal opportunities rule [47 CFR 76.205] and what is left of the fairness doctrine seem to would have been violated, were Facebook regulated as cable. [1] https://www.fcc.gov/media/program-content-regulations https://www.fcc.gov/media/program-content-regulations [47 CFR 76.205] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/76.205 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/76.205
ben_jones 11y ago
"Self-hosted" social networks using centralized authentication and a public API allowing for custom web and mobile clients to be built, sold, licensed etc. Moddable ranking algorithm. Monetize as a PaaS vendor for consumer and enterprise networks. I'll hold your beer if anyone wants to do it.
awesomerobot 11y ago
Just like any news outlet I guess? Maybe they don't frame it very well but we should probably assume people are making decisions whether its the people who are building the algorithms or hand-picking the content... someone's bias is going to work its way into there.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  The irony of this story getting carried around various editor-curated news sites isn't lost on me. And I'm no fan (or user) of FB.
red_admiral 11y ago
I always wondered - I live in the UK and "trending" topics seemed to be a mix of things that were on the BBC news 3 days ago and obviously promoted content (large company X releases Y). Completely useless in any case so I tend never to click in that box.
- morgante 11y ago
  > obviously promoted content There is absolutely no evidence that you can pay to get into trending. If there were, it would be a much bigger story than this flimsy article which is rooted in the editorial judgements of a few contractors. It really annoys me when these drive-by insinuations about "promoted content" are made. Digital media companies—including news outlets, Facebook, and Google—all actually are careful to label anything which is paid placement as such. All these baseless accusations of unlabeled paid placement do is undermine the moral standards for labeling paid placement. If you are going to make extraordinary claims, please bring extraordinary evidence.
  - hrktb 11y ago
    Does there need to be money changing hands to refute promoted content ? Companies providing perks, quid pro quo services, pre-written news stories and other non financial advantages are part of the game. None of those would trigger any of what would be labled as paid placement, but are still promoted placement.
- knorby 11y ago
  If you look at the totality of content many news organizations put out, there are a great number of slightly edited corporate press releases of the sort you are mentioning, and people read such things. It is also worth noting that FB trending topics can be tuned.
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Gratsby 11y ago
This thread makes it seem like the general opinion is that an automatically generated news feed would be better. It wouldn't. Not for end users anyways. It would be a marketer's dream. If you feel like that's the way things should be, write one. Make it popular. Sell it to Facebook. (And use the money to buy stock in your roommate's new online marketing firm)
- auntyJemima 11y ago
  That's not the point, most people have the impression that the trending news is automated and generated by some sort of algorithm. It's highly misleading. The trends should really be called "Facebook's Top Picks" instead.
  - spinlock 11y ago
    Do intelligent people believe this? That's as nieve as thinking hacker news' front page is determined solely by the up arrow. Or that product hunt isn't controlled by insiders. Children believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Is it shocking that they're wrong?
    - joslin01 11y ago
      Are intelligent people the only people worth looking out for? Trending implies humanity cares about it, which to the lowly average-joe means humanity cares about it, so s/he should too. This is the part that feels disingenuous on Facebook's part. Of course even average-joe knows (though probably can't express) that everything around him just wants to consume his attention, so I'm also not overly concerned about it.
    - c_c_c 11y ago
      naive or naïve
- gozur88 11y ago
  >It wouldn't. Not for end users anyways. That's true. The issue here isn't that Facebook tried and failed to implement an automatically generated news feed. The issue is they were called out for bias in the news feed, and then tried to deflect by blaming it on a computer.
hackuser 11y ago
I don't see a problem: No software is good enough to do it on its own (AFAIK); why wouldn't they improve the quality with human editors? Every other news source does it, AFAIK. Will there be hearings about Fox News and whether they are biased? I do have a concern: Facebook isn't a journalism organization, run by professonal journalists with their priorities, values and expertise. They could be very manipulative; many News Corp / Rupert Murdoch publications already do this.
dmode 11y ago
The big problem with this Facebook controversy is the amount of people getting their news from Facebook. There are a thousands of other places to consume news, and they do a better job. I almost never click on the Trending topic on Facebook, because I always that it has been curated/customized based on my profile. I actually use NYT / Twitter / Washington Post etc. to get news and trending topics
- lazzlazzlazz 11y ago
  NYT and Washington Post are subject to the same kinds of biases - in fact, moreso, since what comes up is ultimately in the hands of the executive editor. Twitter also likely uses manual curation. If Facebook improves an algorithmic system augmented with human consensus (that diffuses the editorial control among a group of curators), it will be the least biased of all the mentioned systems.
- morgante 11y ago
  Ironically, Facebook is getting criticized by being more like the NYT and the Washington Post by holding back stories which aren't credible or news-worthy.
- jonlucc 11y ago
  I agree, but all of this hubbub is about the Trending News section. Nobody seems to be saying that Facebook put their finger on the scales of what shows up in news feeds after being shared by friends. I suspect that when people say "60% of millenials get their news primarily from Facebook", they are talking about shared articles and the like, not the "trending now" section.
panic 11y ago
You can't get away from human judgement. If you stop relying on editors' judgement, you'll end up with spam and people gaming the system. To fix the spam, the process of generating the feed will have to be tweaked. The nature of these tweaks (not to mention the design of the original algorithm) reflects the judgement of the human programmers.
- newjersey 11y ago
  Doesn't even have to be commercial spam. With classic hits like Santorum and mission accomplished, I'd think they'd be grateful for a little auditable curation.
dcw303 11y ago
> 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. This strikes me as interesting, if only because it says something about the audience of Facebook users. Sense of community aside, the reason I keep coming back to HN is because I trust that the audience will upvote stories that are interesting to me. I guess because Facebook has such wide community demographics, it can't rely on its users to do the policing.
- spinlock 11y ago
  HN editorializes much more than Facebook.
  - r3bl 11y ago
    Yes, but it is known, recognized and appreciated. HN doesn't try telling people that it's all done by an algorithm.
morgante 11y ago
Maybe Facebook should just kill trending. It's raison d'etre is to expose people to stories beyond the narrow bubble of their news feed. But apparently people don't like the idea of using human curation to get well-balanced stories in front of readers, so it would be much better if people only spent time reading cat videos in news feed. Also, people need to make a clearer distinction between the trending topics view and news feed. They're separate products with different algorithms entirely.
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chris_wot 11y ago
All those people who pooh-poohed those who were concerned with this... Sort of wonder if your opinion has changed? Genuine question.
rodgerd 11y ago
Wake me up when any of the people shitting the bed about this have ever complained about the power wielded by Rupert Murdoch. I might think they were doing something other than having a tantrum about someone outside their own echo chamber having any kind of power over the news.
- King-Aaron 11y ago
  This is your 4.50pm alarm clock, waking you up. There's still a heap of people that cry foul about Murdoch, especially here in Australia. News Corp has a near-monopoly on the news here, and people do get vocal about it.
melle 11y ago
I suspect this doesn't only happen in the trending news feed. From my own experience: I shared an article by Douglas Roushkof (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/digital-capitalism-douglas-rushkoff https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/digital-c...) and several of my friends weren't able to see it, even after they opened my timeline.
VikingCoder 11y ago
PageRank was a huge leap in knowing which web pages were valuable. I'm disappointed we don't have something similar for detecting authority, and measuring the opinions of those with authority. For instance, if there were an article about chess, I would trust Bobby Fischer and Gary Kasparov to provide the most valuable commentary. If they say it's great, I'm more likely to read it. But if there's an article about Jewish business owners, I don't want to see Bobby Fischer's opinion. If there's an article about the government providing welfare and social services, I don't want to see Kasparov's opinion. How is this not a thing for science, technology, news...? "This technology article should scare you!" If I see that from Linus Torvalds, it's going to get my attention. From John McAfee? Not so much. "Nvidia's latest drivers are terrible." If that's from AnimeFan2004, I don't care. If it's from John Carmack, holy crap does it deserve my attention. More importantly, if John Carmack trusts someone about computer graphics, I'll probably trust them, too. If they trust someone else about computer graphics, there's a good chance I will, too. We've gotten used to seeking out the opinion of Rotten Tomatoes, or the old Siskel and Ebert thumb-based-metric... It's a shame we don't have a browser extension that brings those metrics to everything we see on the web. I'm watching the trailer for the new Marvel Civil War movie... and I see a Pop-Up-Video style bubble informing me that Kevin Smith really liked it. I'm reading an article about how Facebook is bringing internet, but not really internet, to India, and I see EFF crapping all over it. Right there - right on that same web page, because my browser extension brings that content in for me. I'm reading an arxiv about gene transfer in plants, and I see experts in the field saying they question the methodology. It just sucks to me that we don't have a PageRank for authority on topics... And we don't have a way to show those scores and opinions, THAT WE TRUST, stuck to the content. For instance, I trust Al Gore on Climate Change. Other people probably trust Donald Trump on Climate Change. It needs to be per-user to determine their authority-trust links. Or helping determine our news feed. (To finally relate my comments back to the topic at hand.)

159 points by protomyth 11y ago

I've said much about this topic, as you can see in my comments. I've since thought about what should be done and I've come to a simple conclusion: Facebook is Mark Zuckerburg's business and enterprise. He can do with it what he wants, just as any business or enterprise has the right to conduct their own business. If he wants to use it to push the a globalist and left agenda, by all means he has the right to do that. It's up to us, the consumer, to vote with our feet. I haven't used Facebook in years and I'm certainly glad not to be using it now that this comes to light as I disagree with it's agenda. Does anyone have an alternative argument as to why Facebook DOES NOT have the RIGHT to suppress and promote information based on it's own agenda?

jbob2000 11y ago
You know, I really doubt that Mark wakes up in the morning, meets with his editing team, and says "guys, we need to push the globalist left agenda". The company is massive, so to say that he has some kind of finger on a "left agenda" button is way over simplifying things.
- sbuttgereit 11y ago
  And yet, in essence, the OP could be right, too. Most of us simply cannot know how Mark or various of his minions (at whatever level) choose to use the various soap boxes they have at their disposal. Rather than oversimplifying, I think the OP is more likely correct and I fully expect Mark and team to wake up in the morning wondering how they can use their privileged access to many millions of users to advance whatever agenda they are supporting that day (political or economic); within some limits of "seemliness", of course. I expect them to act on those thoughts, too. Perhaps it is an oversimplification to bundle ideologies into a monolithic "left" and "right"; reality there is more complex than that. However, for the purposes of generalization it's not unreasonable to group people together when many of their ideologies bear resemblance to the archetypes of political division. To be overly literal about that is, itself, being overly simplistic.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  It's more like this: people in tech for the most part have similar political views, so similar that they almost seem common sense. Take LGBTQ rights. Safe to say Silicon Valley is more pro than con on this issue (and benefits from having a larger and more diverse talent pool), so it is easy to see that perspective being the "correct" side of the argument and seeing the other side as mean-spirited, bigoted, on the wrong side of history...you get the idea.
- eplanit 11y ago
  There is evidence that he actually does decidedly (and within his rights) promote the "left agenda". He's been pushing Black Lives Matter within the company, and anyone who expresses disagreement irks him[1]. [1] http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/02/26/467985384/zuckerberg-tells-facebook-staff-to-stop-crossing-out-black-lives-matter http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/02/26/467...
  - EdHominem 11y ago
    Not true at all. He's been calling out people who vandalize messages they don't like - in particular, BLM.
  - larubbio 11y ago
    I think if you read that article, he isn't pushing 'Black Lives Matter', but rather asked employees to stop crossing it out and writing 'All Lives Matter' His quote from that article explains it "'Black lives matter' doesn't mean other lives don't. It's simply asking that the black community also achieves the justice they deserve. We've never had rules around what people can write on our walls — we expect everybody to treat each other with respect. Regardless of the content or location, crossing out something means silencing speech, or that one person's speech is more important than another's." There may be other cases of him pushing the "left agenda" but I don't think the article you link shows it.
    - ars 11y ago
      > 'Black lives matter' doesn't mean other lives don't. Ha! Yes, actually it does mean that. Otherwise you would not single out a single group as more deserving of life than others. When you call out a specific thing in your argument, you do that to specifically exclude other similar items.
      - solipsism 11y ago
        > Otherwise you would not single out a single group as more deserving of life than others. It doesn't say "Black lives matter more than others." Everyone who understands why it's "Black Lives Matter!" instead of "All Lives Matter!" also understands why you think it should be "All Lives Matter!", we just disagree. There's no subtlety to your point, it's blunt and easy to understand. The difference is, people who think it should be "All Lives Matter!" don't understand why we think it should be "Black Lives Matter!". There's a nuanced point that you don't seem to understand. When you suggest that we're saying black lives matter more than any other lives, you make it clear that you don't get it. This is fine, if you stop misrepresenting the intentions of others they might be willing to explain it to you. Edit: And by the way, you don't have to agree with it the nuanced point in order to understand it. So Zuck insisting people not cross out "Black Lives Matter" is not him pushing that as an agenda -- it's just him showing an understanding that "Black Lives Matter!" is not the same as "White Power!"
- rdancer 11y ago
  Facebook is, as an institution, proud to have ignited national revolutions and shaped policy debates. I doubt Mr Zuckerberg doesn't do that.
tormeh 11y ago
>Does anyone have an alternative argument as to why Facebook DOES NOT have the RIGHT to suppress and promote information based on it's own agenda? The power Facebook has. Power needs to be controlled. As a lefty-ish person I'm not up in arms about this, but I see the problem.
- TrevorJ 11y ago
  I think they do have that right, however, the issue is they SAY the stories are 'trending' when in fact they are simply curated by facebook. That needs to be made clear. Passing off curated content as 'trending' is like simply making up polling data and passing it off as public opinion when in fact it's not.
  - morgante 11y ago
    Who says algorithms are the only possible determinants of something which is trending? The article specifically points out that human editors were introduced after Facebook failed to surface Ferguson protests—making it look bad because those protests were in fact trending on Twitter. Moreover, some theoretical perfect algorithm could have asserted that was a trending topic. In fact, there is not perfect algorithm for determining what is "trending." Part of hiring human curators is to train an algorithm which can more effectively use judgement in figuring out topics which are truly trending/newsworthy/interesting instead of coincidentally used a lot without being valuable (ex. #FollowFriday). Moreover, it seems clear that injecting stories is actually relatively rare. The primary reason to have human curators is to do filtering to prevent the junk from showing up in trending.
    - TrevorJ 11y ago
      I think your argument is really grasping at straws and completely ignores the plain meaning of the words in question.
- jjbiotech 11y ago
  >Power needs to be controlled By whom? I'm legitimately asking this as a lefty-ish person.
popmystack 11y ago
If you read the article, nothing was being "suppressed". The sources mentioned are extremely tabloid-esque in nature. This is only biased if we can provide concrete evidence that similar tabloid-esque publications that happened to align "left" of the political spectrum in the U.S. were allowed to pass while their political counterparts were passed up. If the standard for journalism remained constant, but the sources that were "suppressed" largely happen to be conservative that doesn't seem like a problem with curation, it seems like a problem for the conservative media ecosystem. I fully expect, despite adhering to basic scientific principles, to be downvoted yet again in this thread, because I already see a lot of the same names from the last time this article was posted and politically charged rhetoric (i.e. "leftist agenda").
- scholia 11y ago
  The "conservative media ecosystem" in the USA is detached from reality. That was vividly illustrated by the shock at Fox News when Obama won in 2012. They evidently believed enough of their own lies that they couldn't handle the truth. If Fox News had actually reported the truth all the way through the campaign, they would not have been surprised. http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2012/nov/07/barack-obama-fox-news-election http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2012/nov/07/barack-oba...
  - at-fates-hands 11y ago
    The ironic part about your statement is the fact that the Republicans took back both houses of congress in the mid-terms. Even if they were detached from reality, I'd say that was a huge punch in the nuts for the Democrats after re-electing their president to a second term, and holding a super majority for 2 years. You wanna know why Donald Trump has swept the Republican establishment? Because after all the promises by the Republicans about what they were going to do after being elected, they've done almost nothing they promised and their constituents are pissed and sending a message - time for the establishment to go. It doesn't matter if Trump wins or not. The message has been sent, and if the "establishment Republicans" don't get it, and get in line, then they might as well hand the Presidency back over to the Clinton political machine.
gozur88 11y ago
>Facebook is Mark Zuckerburg's business and enterprise. He can do with it what he wants, just as any business or enterprise has the right to conduct their own business. It may be a little nit-picky to point it out, but in the general sense this isn't true. As soon as the company went public it stopped being Mark Zuckerburg's business and enterprise, becoming instead the property of the shareholders who employ Zuckerburg to look after their company. Zuckerburg owns less than 30%.
- shostack 11y ago
  Doesn't his share class factor pretty heavily into that statement though?
  - gozur88 11y ago
    Hmmmm. This is a pretty interesting (and unusual) story, now that I look into it. Part of the arrangement when FB went public is some of the larger investors ceded him irrevocable proxy rights for their shares, giving him over 50% of the votes even though he owns only 28.2% of voting shares. It's not so much a difference in share classes as a sort of side deal. http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/01/zuck-power-play/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/01/zuck-power-play/ But the point remains, even if it's kind of technical when he can always outvote everyone else. He can't treat the company as his personal fiefdom if it crosses the legal interests of other shareholders. If he goes too far they can probably sue successfully.
scholia 11y ago
Facebook dropped algorithmic news curation "after criticism that it had not included enough coverage of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, in users’ feeds". Its current "agenda" is based on reputable news sources, plus Fox News (1): "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." I'd say that was a fair reflection of mainstream media. If you object to those, what's your personal agenda based on, and how mainstream is it? (1) Fox News has specifically said in court that it is not required to be truthful.
- extra88 11y ago
  I agree that it's a reasonable list for U.S. news. Yahoo is a weird one to have on the list, do they do any original reporting (of real news, not entertainment)? Maybe they're a reliable source of AP or other newswire services.
  - eropple 11y ago
    Yahoo has a pretty strong sports reporting group. They have many of the heavy hitters in basketball media, for example. It makes sense to me that they'd be a common source. (If you're gonna be That Guy and hurr about sports being entertainment, you can pass.)
  - scholia 11y ago
    You're right, it's a reliable source of newswires. I don't think it does any original news reporting.
  - nommm-nommm 11y ago
    Alexa ranks Yahoo News the 8th most popular news source on the Internet. More popular than Fox News, BBC, and WSJ. As previously mentioned their sports coverage is superb. Yahoo has at least experimented with original content but I am not sure if they still have it. http://www.alexa.com/topsites/category/Top/News http://www.alexa.com/topsites/category/Top/News
- 11y ago
at-fates-hands 11y ago
>> He can do with it what he wants, just as any business or enterprise has the right to conduct their own business. Unless you're a publicly traded company, which Facebook is. Then you are beholden to the people who are invested in your company; some of which I would assume are probably conservative and right leaning. If FB was still a private company, then yeah, your sentiment holds true. All bets are off when you're a publicly traded and funded company. At that point, it's the investors who tell you what the direction of the company is. Don't like it? Then buyout all the shareholders and return your company back to the private realm.
- larubbio 11y ago
  Do you need to buyout all the investors or just enough to give you > 50% (Which Zuck already controls doesn't he?)
hackuser 11y ago
> He can do with it what he wants, just as any business or enterprise has the right to conduct their own business. We all have legal rights to do things that are morally wrong. He has a resposibility to the world to be a responsible citizen, just as we all do. Prior and current generations of responsible citizens are mostly responsible for Facebook: Without generations of people doing the responsible thing, even dying, for democracy, liberty, science and technlogy, education, infrastructure, law, etc. ... he'd be living in a country and world where there would be no technology, legal rights, literacy, or many other things necessary to Facebook.
ta_donk_gt 11y ago
Sure, FB can push any agenda they want. The issue is the deception. The product is marketed as organic and representative, and a number of people are indicating this is not actually the case. I'm not real familiar with current law around this type of behavior, so of its legality I have no idea. What I would compare it to though are other deceptive business marketing practices like photoshopping before and after pics for weight-loss products, or marketing your dog food as premium, all natural meat based when it is in fact the same junk, bought from the same supplier, as another dog food brand that costs half as much (and is specifically called out as inferior in commercials). At the least, even if not criminal, it would seem to open the door to civil lawsuits.
onewaystreet 11y ago
Facebook isn't being accused of pushing an agenda. The accusations are against a few of their hired contractors.

fullshark 11y ago

That's better than simply optimizing for clicks probably.

jonathankoren 11y ago
What makes you think it's not?

untilHellbanned 11y ago

I'm actually serious when I say this a huge opportunity for Twitter. Twitter has the possibility for so much randomness, which I would say is good for the health of the world. Its a public free for all. Facebook, as Stratchery [1] and others have said, facilitates a group think world. You interact with your friends who all think like you. I'm an investor in Facebook and no longer one in Twitter, but I can't think of anything more I'd like than to lose than my money on Facebook. 1. https://stratechery.com/2016/the-real-problem-with-facebook-and-the-news/ https://stratechery.com/2016/the-real-problem-with-facebook-...

hammock 11y ago
Twitter is already more overt than Facebook about its left-leaning censorship. Cf. the Trust & Safety Council, shadowbanning tweets and accounts, de-verifying accounts, and manipulating trending topics in a similar way to Facebook
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  I don't know about how Twitter selects "trending topics". But I find it strange that a "Trust & Safety Council" and other tools to help protect people could be considered "left-leaning". I'm pretty allergic to politics, especially politics being injected where it doesn't belong, but I'm just not seeing the connection there.
  - rdancer 11y ago
    It's the other way 'round. Someone has a pragmatic stance on something, and the SJWs label it as political, and ban it. They also ban or not ban people because of their politics. It's one thing to ban all politics, another banning just those you oppose (and bonus if it's just an excuse and the real reason is money or connections). You don't have to look further than Twitter for examples of all of the above.
    - JoshTriplett 11y ago
      None of what you just said has anything to do with Twitter having a "Trust & Safety Council", or taking other steps to help users protect themselves.

sjg007 11y ago

And Fox News is totally unbiased.

at-fates-hands 11y ago
This is probably the worst fucking argument I've ever heard. If you're dismissing Fox News as being biased, then you need to eject all the rest of the MSM coverage too; because they're equally biased if not worse. Fuck, MSNBC doesn't even try and hide the fact they're on the Democratic team, it's practically their own propaganda tool for God's sake. I'll gladly take a little news from a source that's not obviously pitching me the Democratic talking points night in and night out.
- scholia 11y ago
  If you check Politifact http://www.politifact.com/ http://www.politifact.com/ you'll find that most of what Clinton says is mostly true, whereas practically everything Trump says is mostly false. Fox, like Trump, doesn't feel the need to tell the truth. MSM (1) generally does. (1) For Facebook, MSM means: "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."
  - protomyth 11y ago
    Politifact isn't seen as nonpartisan. The Tampa Bay Times is the parent org and they have not endorsed any Republican candidates for President. They are a liberal newspaper and that is reflected in their fact assessments.
    - jonathankoren 11y ago
      Well, reality has a well known liberal bias.
      - rdancer 11y ago
        If that were so, would liberal arguments need to turn to unsourced verisimilitudes?

tn13 11y ago

Lawyers, journalists (or in general humanities student) tend to be liberal in my opinion. You can employ them and expect them to be neutral. Self employed people, farmers etc. tend to be more conservative generally. You cant employ journalists and expect them to be neutral. I had always seen facebook's Trending section as "The Politically Liberal Outrage" section right from the start. I thought it was "intended to be liberal outrage" to begin with. Algorithmic trending based on what is popular with human filters to weed out only NSFW stuff appears to be the way to go forward. I cant blame facebook. We live in a world where if a company's experimental AI classified black people as monkeys we somehow think that is racist and make the company stop those AI efforts. In reality a truly neutral platform would trend what is really trending, if it is racist slur so be it because then the media is truly holding mirror to the society. That is how we might get better. Else everything becomes one large safe space which is death of intellectual speech.

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salimmadjd 11y ago

Given the history of propaganda and how we got into the Iraq war, this is an area of real major concern for me. On two different occasions I've noticed a similar behavior on a "trending" news topic that was not trending anywhere. Both cases (surprisingly) that caught my eyes, had to do with vilification of Iran. The first time, I assumed a certain organized PR effort or perhaps it was naturally trending. However, the second time (May 9th) [0] it coincided with the Gizmodo's article coming out. That prompted me to search all major news sites (with the logic that if it was on some major news sites it will then circulate within FB and will explain why it was trend). So I decided to document this, I checked CNN, HuffingtonPost, NYTimes, WashingtonPost...no mention of an "Iranian missile test" but there was a small blurb at the bottom of the FoxNew site [1]. Not enough exposure for it to get the kind of volume to be the top-3 trending story. [0] http://imgur.com/UNRBrRu http://imgur.com/UNRBrRu [1] http://imgur.com/1f13R80 http://imgur.com/1f13R80

spenvo 11y ago
Facebook's opaque blend of personalized algos and editorial decision-making means it can never be truly pinned down on what it shows you
- arcticfox 11y ago
  How are you so sure [1] is promoted? That would be a HUGE scandal if it was. IMO, bigger than this trending topics issue.
  - spenvo 11y ago
    Hey, there isn't any way for me to be sure -- after some digging -- looks like a "sponsored" label is necessary [0] -- i've amended my comment. [0] - https://www.facebook.com/business/help/community/question/?id=1060144240714352 https://www.facebook.com/business/help/community/question/?i...
ProAm 11y ago
> Given the history of propaganda and how we got into the Iraq war, this is an area of real major concern for me. This is how the news media has operated in the US for almost all of its existence. I wouldnt be too concerned about it, just take news you read with a grain of salt.

emblem21 11y ago

News organizations classify themselves as social networks to bypass FCC regulations, blogs at 11.

harryh 11y ago
Exactly which FCC regulations do you think have been bypassed here?
- rdancer 11y ago
  I never imagined there would be any regulation for cable networks content, but apparently the FCC has come up with a host[1]. The equal opportunities rule [47 CFR 76.205] and what is left of the fairness doctrine seem to would have been violated, were Facebook regulated as cable. [1] https://www.fcc.gov/media/program-content-regulations https://www.fcc.gov/media/program-content-regulations [47 CFR 76.205] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/76.205 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/76.205

ben_jones 11y ago

"Self-hosted" social networks using centralized authentication and a public API allowing for custom web and mobile clients to be built, sold, licensed etc. Moddable ranking algorithm. Monetize as a PaaS vendor for consumer and enterprise networks. I'll hold your beer if anyone wants to do it.

awesomerobot 11y ago

Just like any news outlet I guess? Maybe they don't frame it very well but we should probably assume people are making decisions whether its the people who are building the algorithms or hand-picking the content... someone's bias is going to work its way into there.

dredmorbius 11y ago
The irony of this story getting carried around various editor-curated news sites isn't lost on me. And I'm no fan (or user) of FB.

red_admiral 11y ago

I always wondered - I live in the UK and "trending" topics seemed to be a mix of things that were on the BBC news 3 days ago and obviously promoted content (large company X releases Y). Completely useless in any case so I tend never to click in that box.

morgante 11y ago
> obviously promoted content There is absolutely no evidence that you can pay to get into trending. If there were, it would be a much bigger story than this flimsy article which is rooted in the editorial judgements of a few contractors. It really annoys me when these drive-by insinuations about "promoted content" are made. Digital media companies—including news outlets, Facebook, and Google—all actually are careful to label anything which is paid placement as such. All these baseless accusations of unlabeled paid placement do is undermine the moral standards for labeling paid placement. If you are going to make extraordinary claims, please bring extraordinary evidence.
- hrktb 11y ago
  Does there need to be money changing hands to refute promoted content ? Companies providing perks, quid pro quo services, pre-written news stories and other non financial advantages are part of the game. None of those would trigger any of what would be labled as paid placement, but are still promoted placement.
knorby 11y ago
If you look at the totality of content many news organizations put out, there are a great number of slightly edited corporate press releases of the sort you are mentioning, and people read such things. It is also worth noting that FB trending topics can be tuned.

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Gratsby 11y ago

This thread makes it seem like the general opinion is that an automatically generated news feed would be better. It wouldn't. Not for end users anyways. It would be a marketer's dream. If you feel like that's the way things should be, write one. Make it popular. Sell it to Facebook. (And use the money to buy stock in your roommate's new online marketing firm)

auntyJemima 11y ago
That's not the point, most people have the impression that the trending news is automated and generated by some sort of algorithm. It's highly misleading. The trends should really be called "Facebook's Top Picks" instead.
- spinlock 11y ago
  Do intelligent people believe this? That's as nieve as thinking hacker news' front page is determined solely by the up arrow. Or that product hunt isn't controlled by insiders. Children believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Is it shocking that they're wrong?
  - joslin01 11y ago
    Are intelligent people the only people worth looking out for? Trending implies humanity cares about it, which to the lowly average-joe means humanity cares about it, so s/he should too. This is the part that feels disingenuous on Facebook's part. Of course even average-joe knows (though probably can't express) that everything around him just wants to consume his attention, so I'm also not overly concerned about it.
  - c_c_c 11y ago
    naive or naïve
gozur88 11y ago
>It wouldn't. Not for end users anyways. That's true. The issue here isn't that Facebook tried and failed to implement an automatically generated news feed. The issue is they were called out for bias in the news feed, and then tried to deflect by blaming it on a computer.

hackuser 11y ago

I don't see a problem: No software is good enough to do it on its own (AFAIK); why wouldn't they improve the quality with human editors? Every other news source does it, AFAIK. Will there be hearings about Fox News and whether they are biased? I do have a concern: Facebook isn't a journalism organization, run by professonal journalists with their priorities, values and expertise. They could be very manipulative; many News Corp / Rupert Murdoch publications already do this.

dmode 11y ago

The big problem with this Facebook controversy is the amount of people getting their news from Facebook. There are a thousands of other places to consume news, and they do a better job. I almost never click on the Trending topic on Facebook, because I always that it has been curated/customized based on my profile. I actually use NYT / Twitter / Washington Post etc. to get news and trending topics

lazzlazzlazz 11y ago
NYT and Washington Post are subject to the same kinds of biases - in fact, moreso, since what comes up is ultimately in the hands of the executive editor. Twitter also likely uses manual curation. If Facebook improves an algorithmic system augmented with human consensus (that diffuses the editorial control among a group of curators), it will be the least biased of all the mentioned systems.
morgante 11y ago
Ironically, Facebook is getting criticized by being more like the NYT and the Washington Post by holding back stories which aren't credible or news-worthy.
jonlucc 11y ago
I agree, but all of this hubbub is about the Trending News section. Nobody seems to be saying that Facebook put their finger on the scales of what shows up in news feeds after being shared by friends. I suspect that when people say "60% of millenials get their news primarily from Facebook", they are talking about shared articles and the like, not the "trending now" section.

panic 11y ago

You can't get away from human judgement. If you stop relying on editors' judgement, you'll end up with spam and people gaming the system. To fix the spam, the process of generating the feed will have to be tweaked. The nature of these tweaks (not to mention the design of the original algorithm) reflects the judgement of the human programmers.

newjersey 11y ago
Doesn't even have to be commercial spam. With classic hits like Santorum and mission accomplished, I'd think they'd be grateful for a little auditable curation.

dcw303 11y ago

> 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. This strikes me as interesting, if only because it says something about the audience of Facebook users. Sense of community aside, the reason I keep coming back to HN is because I trust that the audience will upvote stories that are interesting to me. I guess because Facebook has such wide community demographics, it can't rely on its users to do the policing.

spinlock 11y ago
HN editorializes much more than Facebook.
- r3bl 11y ago
  Yes, but it is known, recognized and appreciated. HN doesn't try telling people that it's all done by an algorithm.

morgante 11y ago

Maybe Facebook should just kill trending. It's raison d'etre is to expose people to stories beyond the narrow bubble of their news feed. But apparently people don't like the idea of using human curation to get well-balanced stories in front of readers, so it would be much better if people only spent time reading cat videos in news feed. Also, people need to make a clearer distinction between the trending topics view and news feed. They're separate products with different algorithms entirely.

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chris_wot 11y ago

All those people who pooh-poohed those who were concerned with this... Sort of wonder if your opinion has changed? Genuine question.

rodgerd 11y ago

Wake me up when any of the people shitting the bed about this have ever complained about the power wielded by Rupert Murdoch. I might think they were doing something other than having a tantrum about someone outside their own echo chamber having any kind of power over the news.

King-Aaron 11y ago
This is your 4.50pm alarm clock, waking you up. There's still a heap of people that cry foul about Murdoch, especially here in Australia. News Corp has a near-monopoly on the news here, and people do get vocal about it.

melle 11y ago

I suspect this doesn't only happen in the trending news feed. From my own experience: I shared an article by Douglas Roushkof (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/digital-capitalism-douglas-rushkoff https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/digital-c...) and several of my friends weren't able to see it, even after they opened my timeline.

VikingCoder 11y ago

PageRank was a huge leap in knowing which web pages were valuable. I'm disappointed we don't have something similar for detecting authority, and measuring the opinions of those with authority. For instance, if there were an article about chess, I would trust Bobby Fischer and Gary Kasparov to provide the most valuable commentary. If they say it's great, I'm more likely to read it. But if there's an article about Jewish business owners, I don't want to see Bobby Fischer's opinion. If there's an article about the government providing welfare and social services, I don't want to see Kasparov's opinion. How is this not a thing for science, technology, news...? "This technology article should scare you!" If I see that from Linus Torvalds, it's going to get my attention. From John McAfee? Not so much. "Nvidia's latest drivers are terrible." If that's from AnimeFan2004, I don't care. If it's from John Carmack, holy crap does it deserve my attention. More importantly, if John Carmack trusts someone about computer graphics, I'll probably trust them, too. If they trust someone else about computer graphics, there's a good chance I will, too. We've gotten used to seeking out the opinion of Rotten Tomatoes, or the old Siskel and Ebert thumb-based-metric... It's a shame we don't have a browser extension that brings those metrics to everything we see on the web. I'm watching the trailer for the new Marvel Civil War movie... and I see a Pop-Up-Video style bubble informing me that Kevin Smith really liked it. I'm reading an article about how Facebook is bringing internet, but not really internet, to India, and I see EFF crapping all over it. Right there - right on that same web page, because my browser extension brings that content in for me. I'm reading an arxiv about gene transfer in plants, and I see experts in the field saying they question the methodology. It just sucks to me that we don't have a PageRank for authority on topics... And we don't have a way to show those scores and opinions, THAT WE TRUST, stuck to the content. For instance, I trust Al Gore on Climate Change. Other people probably trust Donald Trump on Climate Change. It needs to be per-user to determine their authority-trust links. Or helping determine our news feed. (To finally relate my comments back to the topic at hand.)