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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 M

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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
    Not true at all. He's been calling out people who vandalize messages they don't like - in particular, BLM.
  - larubbio 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
      I think your argument is really grasping at straws and completely ignores the plain meaning of the words in question.
- jjbiotech 10y ago
  >Power needs to be controlled By whom? I'm legitimately asking this as a lefty-ish person.
popmystack 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
  Doesn't his share class factor pretty heavily into that statement though?
  - gozur88 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
    You're right, it's a reliable source of newswires. I don't think it does any original news reporting.
  - nommm-nommm 10y 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
- 10y ago
at-fates-hands 10y 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 10y ago
  Do you need to buyout all the investors or just enough to give you > 50% (Which Zuck already controls doesn't he?)
hackuser 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
Facebook isn't being accused of pushing an agenda. The accusations are against a few of their hired contractors.

jbob2000 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
  Not true at all. He's been calling out people who vandalize messages they don't like - in particular, BLM.
- larubbio 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
    I think your argument is really grasping at straws and completely ignores the plain meaning of the words in question.
jjbiotech 10y ago
>Power needs to be controlled By whom? I'm legitimately asking this as a lefty-ish person.

popmystack 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
Doesn't his share class factor pretty heavily into that statement though?
- gozur88 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
  You're right, it's a reliable source of newswires. I don't think it does any original news reporting.
- nommm-nommm 10y 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
10y ago

at-fates-hands 10y 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 10y ago
Do you need to buyout all the investors or just enough to give you > 50% (Which Zuck already controls doesn't he?)

hackuser 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago

Facebook isn't being accused of pushing an agenda. The accusations are against a few of their hired contractors.