6 ms·

Mark Zuckerberg is struggling to explain why Breitbart belongs on Facebook News

27 points by smacktoward 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jjellyy 7y ago
Breitbart is mainstream conservative ...
negzero7 7y ago
Why wouldn't Breitbart be on Facebook News? Just about every news site these days is full of strong bias and misinformation - none are objective. They've made it hard to justify why we should listen to any of them. Just take a look at the NBC scandal with Matt Lauer, or the fake Syrian war footage ABC was spreading around that turned out to be a shooting range in Kentucky. Not to mention the Project Veritas releases concerning CNN and others. Trust is low with all news organizations and I think The Verge is just continuing to push their own bias onto users with this article. *edit - I see downvotes but no comments. I'd love to have my mind changed if someone has good reasons other than they don't like right wing media.
- the_gastropod 7y ago
  Holy false equivalency, Batman.
  - negzero7 7y ago
    How so?
    - the_gastropod 7y ago
      C'mon. In your critique of mainstream media, you unironically cited Project Veritas to bolster your claim? From the Wikipedia page of Project Veritas: > The organization has produced deceptively edited videos targeted against ACORN, NPR and others.[12][13][14] During the 2016 campaign, the organization falsely claimed to have shown that the Hillary Clinton accepted illegal donations from foreign sources.[15] > O'Keefe was sued for defamation by a man he wrongfully depicted as a "willing participant in an underage sex-trafficking scheme"; the suit led to a settlement in 2013, in which O'Keefe issued an apology and paid $100,000.[16] > In 2017, it was caught in a failed attempt to trick the The Washington Post into posting a fabricated story about Roy Moore.[2][3][17][18] Rather than uncritically publish a story that accused Republican candidate Moore of impregnating a teenager, The Washington Post critically examined the story that they were presented with, checked the source, assessed her credibility and ultimately found that there was no merit to her claims, and that instead Project Veritas were trying to dupe The Washington Post.[10] > O'Keefe has been barred from fundraising for Project Veritas in Florida and other states because of his federal criminal record for entering a federal building under fraudulent pretenses Trust is low with legitimate news organizations because we have a political party very keen on believing bizarre conspiracy theories, who've rallied behind a narcissist who attacks any source critical of him. NPR, the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, etc are all pretty damn solid news organizations. Are they perfect? No. But to compare their credibility to the likes of InfoWars or Breitbart is patently absurd.
- syockit 7y ago
  NewsGuard gave Breitbart green rating this year, citing that it regularly issues corrections. Facebook's choice of news sources probably works on the same guidelines. Of course, the good sources are the ones that do not publish errors or misinformation at all in the first place. But if that is used as the criteria, then most of the mainstream media would not even be legitimate candidate.
- pnutjam 7y ago
  Downvoted and commented. ----- Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. Jean Paul-Sartre
JohnStrangeII 7y ago
The one and only time I looked at Breitbart, because it was mentioned online, must have been around 2015 or so. The news site looked like a UK tabloid/yellow press Fox News clone, nothing special really. I then looked at the public comment section and users there were discussing how to best gas as many Jews as possible in the US. I'm sure they cleaned up the site a bit since then, but this is a true story. Bottomline of the anecdote is that Breitbart cannot possibly be considered a "high quality news site." On a side note, from the people who criticize "mainstream media" I have never heard a single halfway sane suggestion of where else you could get news. The best suggestion I've ever gotten was "Wikipedia", and the best wrong answer so far was "books." Most of them don't even seem to know what news are, they seem to confuse the term with "political opinions that I like." We live in crazy times.
- deogeo 7y ago
  > I then looked at the public comment section and users there were discussing how to best gas as many Jews as possible in the US. I'm sure they cleaned up the site a bit since then, but this is a true story. Yet the founder, Andrew Breitbart, was raised Jewish, the co-founder, Larry Solov, is Jewish, as is the editor-in-chief Alex Marlow, and the senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak. That's 4 out of the 6 key people at Breitbart [1]. In the words of Alex Marlow: "we're consistently called anti-Semitic despite the fact that we are overwhelmingly staffed with Jews and are pro-Israel and pro-Jewish." [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Marlow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Marlow
- bArray 7y ago
  > I then looked at the public comment section and users there > were discussing how to best gas as many Jews as possible > in the US. This is the reason that the comments section of almost every news website was removed. Unless you have the resources to moderate the comments, you'll simply end up with ultra polarized views. > Bottomline of the anecdote is that Breitbart cannot > possibly be considered a "high quality news site." Because of a single experience in 2015? I saw this sort of thing on the BBC website too back when they had comments. > from the people who criticize "mainstream media" I have > never heard a single halfway sane suggestion of where else > you could get news. So, shut up and accept it? I think everybody should be aware of the potential for bias and/or incorrect news produced by mainstream media. For example, just look at how many mainstream news outlets rushed to "lynch" the Kentucky high school student for supposedly confronting a native American [1]. The large majority of them did zero fact checking. The first rebuttals I saw online came from independent news sources that got hold of the original video and saw how it had been clipped. [1] https://www.foxnews.com/us/kentucky-student-seen-in-viral-confrontation-with-native-american-speaks-out https://www.foxnews.com/us/kentucky-student-seen-in-viral-co...
bArray 7y ago
The answer to me seems quite clear: 1. You want representation of both sides of the political spectrum, otherwise you'll be accused of bias. The number of right leaning news sources is relatively few (from what I have observed), I don't imagine there were many for the pick. 2. If you actually read the front page, the majority of their news appears to be reasonably good [1] (at least compared to other popular new sites). It's hardly the Daily Stormer [2]. 3. There are more right-leaning people out there than the majority of people realize. In fact, they number roughly half the population in most Countries. As a left-leaning person you should also be aware of what the other side thinks, rather than being subjected to news source that reinforce your own bias. 4. I think the "negative" impact of Breitbart is largely reduced when depicted side-by-side with other sources of news. If anything it simply allows people to know that there is more than one opinion on the subject. [1] https://www.breitbart.com/ https://www.breitbart.com/ [2] https://dailystormer.name/ https://dailystormer.name/
- deogeo 7y ago
  > more than one opinion on the subject. In my experience, the difference between publications isn't so much in the opinions they express, but in which stories they choose to cover. Go to reason.com for stories of government abuse of power, and motherjones.com for corporate abuses. They can cover their stories accurately, but simply by choosing which they cover, they will paint a very different picture of reality.
  - bArray 7y ago
    For sure - but this is precisely the reason we should all reach for a wide variety of sources. Your typical left-wing news source might choose not to publish a story critical of left-wing politics for example, whereas Breitbart would likely jump on the opportunity. Breitbart on the other hand might choose not to be critical of right-wing political stories. As my parents once told me as a child, the truth is often somewhere in the middle.
- kibibu 7y ago
  Breitbart courted a bunch of white nationalists, including Weev from the Daily Stormer. Buzzfeed has the emails to prove it. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-smuggled-white-nationalism https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/heres-h...
tomohawk 7y ago
It's really the wrong question. Do entities all have to justify why they 'belong' on Facebook? What about vox media? How do they justify that they belong? This is just more cancel culture. Facebook will never be successful putting itself in the middle of a culture war.
iongoatb 7y ago
Why? Because Breitbart is more legitimate than CNN. Breitbart focuses on facts and logic, rather than emotions and propaganda. This is coming from a former "liberal" that had to walk away because of the far-left socialist cult that the left has now become. A Harvard study showed that over 93% of news about Trump by the MSM is negative (ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, etc) [https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-harvard-study-cnn-nbc-trump-coverage-93-percent-negative https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-harvard-study-...]. That is unheard of, even in tyrannical regimes that have state-controlled media, like China and Russia. They at least pretend to have political opposition by the elites, to appease the masses. Furthermore, a PEW research poll dove deep into the political divide in the country. When they looked at the average left-leaning person and average right-leaning person, what they found is that the left has moved FAR left on average, while the right has only moved slightly further to the right [http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/10/05162647/10-05-2017-Political-landscape-release.pdf http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/201...]. What we are seeing in today's climate is that JFK's political agenda would be considered far right, rather than traditionally democratic. Such as: 1) Strong foreign policy based on American national interests and values ("America First" from Trump, also seen with JFK) 2) Pro skilled immigration, strong border protection for illegal aliens (Obama, Clinton, Trump) 3) Common-sense progressive policies on domestic social issues If you need anymore convincing, then just check out the Project Veritas bombshell on CNN. Jeff Zucker explicitly told the world what we already implicitly knew: that CNN is an anti-Trump propaganda machine, not a news organization. TL;DR 1. Breitbart is less radical than the MSM, especially CNN, which all have a spot on Facebook News 2. Breitbart may colloquially seem radical because of how far-left the average liberal has become (see Pew research), but perception is not reality. 3. Breitbart is mainstream conservative. Facebook's mission statement is to be a platform "for all ideas", per Zuckerburg, We live in America, and Breitbart is extremely popular - it is consistently ranked #1 for political media. 4. Unlike CNN and their recent expose by Project Veritas, Breitbart does not peddle propaganda. They deliver news - which is why I shut off the MSM after the 2016 election when they were clearly shilling for Clinton. 5. Due to #1, #2, #3, and #4 it deserves to be on Facebook, the platform for all ideas.
- chowyuncat 7y ago
  Anything that cites Project Veritas as a source should be laughed out of the room.
dekhn 7y ago
Breitbart is a legitimate news agency (you may not like that, but it is). Also, if they left it out lots of people would just howl about how Zuckerberg was catering to liberals. It's as simple as that. Although I'm much more on the "NYTimes is Truth" side, I read Breitbart daily to gain perspective of what people who voted for Trump think. Content moderation and factual determination at internet scale in the face of state-sponsored propaganda and multiple divisive nonfactual news agencies is definitely non-trivial. Zuck has started out with a stated philosophy and is attempting to be consistent with it, while also trying to avoid appearance of liberal bias. Some of the consequences of that will not make many people happy.

27 points by smacktoward 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jjellyy 7y ago

Breitbart is mainstream conservative ...

negzero7 7y ago

Why wouldn't Breitbart be on Facebook News? Just about every news site these days is full of strong bias and misinformation - none are objective. They've made it hard to justify why we should listen to any of them. Just take a look at the NBC scandal with Matt Lauer, or the fake Syrian war footage ABC was spreading around that turned out to be a shooting range in Kentucky. Not to mention the Project Veritas releases concerning CNN and others. Trust is low with all news organizations and I think The Verge is just continuing to push their own bias onto users with this article. *edit - I see downvotes but no comments. I'd love to have my mind changed if someone has good reasons other than they don't like right wing media.

the_gastropod 7y ago
Holy false equivalency, Batman.
- negzero7 7y ago
  How so?
  - the_gastropod 7y ago
    C'mon. In your critique of mainstream media, you unironically cited Project Veritas to bolster your claim? From the Wikipedia page of Project Veritas: > The organization has produced deceptively edited videos targeted against ACORN, NPR and others.[12][13][14] During the 2016 campaign, the organization falsely claimed to have shown that the Hillary Clinton accepted illegal donations from foreign sources.[15] > O'Keefe was sued for defamation by a man he wrongfully depicted as a "willing participant in an underage sex-trafficking scheme"; the suit led to a settlement in 2013, in which O'Keefe issued an apology and paid $100,000.[16] > In 2017, it was caught in a failed attempt to trick the The Washington Post into posting a fabricated story about Roy Moore.[2][3][17][18] Rather than uncritically publish a story that accused Republican candidate Moore of impregnating a teenager, The Washington Post critically examined the story that they were presented with, checked the source, assessed her credibility and ultimately found that there was no merit to her claims, and that instead Project Veritas were trying to dupe The Washington Post.[10] > O'Keefe has been barred from fundraising for Project Veritas in Florida and other states because of his federal criminal record for entering a federal building under fraudulent pretenses Trust is low with legitimate news organizations because we have a political party very keen on believing bizarre conspiracy theories, who've rallied behind a narcissist who attacks any source critical of him. NPR, the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, etc are all pretty damn solid news organizations. Are they perfect? No. But to compare their credibility to the likes of InfoWars or Breitbart is patently absurd.
syockit 7y ago
NewsGuard gave Breitbart green rating this year, citing that it regularly issues corrections. Facebook's choice of news sources probably works on the same guidelines. Of course, the good sources are the ones that do not publish errors or misinformation at all in the first place. But if that is used as the criteria, then most of the mainstream media would not even be legitimate candidate.
pnutjam 7y ago
Downvoted and commented. ----- Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. Jean Paul-Sartre

JohnStrangeII 7y ago

The one and only time I looked at Breitbart, because it was mentioned online, must have been around 2015 or so. The news site looked like a UK tabloid/yellow press Fox News clone, nothing special really. I then looked at the public comment section and users there were discussing how to best gas as many Jews as possible in the US. I'm sure they cleaned up the site a bit since then, but this is a true story. Bottomline of the anecdote is that Breitbart cannot possibly be considered a "high quality news site." On a side note, from the people who criticize "mainstream media" I have never heard a single halfway sane suggestion of where else you could get news. The best suggestion I've ever gotten was "Wikipedia", and the best wrong answer so far was "books." Most of them don't even seem to know what news are, they seem to confuse the term with "political opinions that I like." We live in crazy times.

deogeo 7y ago
> I then looked at the public comment section and users there were discussing how to best gas as many Jews as possible in the US. I'm sure they cleaned up the site a bit since then, but this is a true story. Yet the founder, Andrew Breitbart, was raised Jewish, the co-founder, Larry Solov, is Jewish, as is the editor-in-chief Alex Marlow, and the senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak. That's 4 out of the 6 key people at Breitbart [1]. In the words of Alex Marlow: "we're consistently called anti-Semitic despite the fact that we are overwhelmingly staffed with Jews and are pro-Israel and pro-Jewish." [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Marlow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Marlow
bArray 7y ago
> I then looked at the public comment section and users there > were discussing how to best gas as many Jews as possible > in the US. This is the reason that the comments section of almost every news website was removed. Unless you have the resources to moderate the comments, you'll simply end up with ultra polarized views. > Bottomline of the anecdote is that Breitbart cannot > possibly be considered a "high quality news site." Because of a single experience in 2015? I saw this sort of thing on the BBC website too back when they had comments. > from the people who criticize "mainstream media" I have > never heard a single halfway sane suggestion of where else > you could get news. So, shut up and accept it? I think everybody should be aware of the potential for bias and/or incorrect news produced by mainstream media. For example, just look at how many mainstream news outlets rushed to "lynch" the Kentucky high school student for supposedly confronting a native American [1]. The large majority of them did zero fact checking. The first rebuttals I saw online came from independent news sources that got hold of the original video and saw how it had been clipped. [1] https://www.foxnews.com/us/kentucky-student-seen-in-viral-confrontation-with-native-american-speaks-out https://www.foxnews.com/us/kentucky-student-seen-in-viral-co...

bArray 7y ago

The answer to me seems quite clear: 1. You want representation of both sides of the political spectrum, otherwise you'll be accused of bias. The number of right leaning news sources is relatively few (from what I have observed), I don't imagine there were many for the pick. 2. If you actually read the front page, the majority of their news appears to be reasonably good [1] (at least compared to other popular new sites). It's hardly the Daily Stormer [2]. 3. There are more right-leaning people out there than the majority of people realize. In fact, they number roughly half the population in most Countries. As a left-leaning person you should also be aware of what the other side thinks, rather than being subjected to news source that reinforce your own bias. 4. I think the "negative" impact of Breitbart is largely reduced when depicted side-by-side with other sources of news. If anything it simply allows people to know that there is more than one opinion on the subject. [1] https://www.breitbart.com/ https://www.breitbart.com/ [2] https://dailystormer.name/ https://dailystormer.name/

deogeo 7y ago
> more than one opinion on the subject. In my experience, the difference between publications isn't so much in the opinions they express, but in which stories they choose to cover. Go to reason.com for stories of government abuse of power, and motherjones.com for corporate abuses. They can cover their stories accurately, but simply by choosing which they cover, they will paint a very different picture of reality.
- bArray 7y ago
  For sure - but this is precisely the reason we should all reach for a wide variety of sources. Your typical left-wing news source might choose not to publish a story critical of left-wing politics for example, whereas Breitbart would likely jump on the opportunity. Breitbart on the other hand might choose not to be critical of right-wing political stories. As my parents once told me as a child, the truth is often somewhere in the middle.
kibibu 7y ago
Breitbart courted a bunch of white nationalists, including Weev from the Daily Stormer. Buzzfeed has the emails to prove it. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-smuggled-white-nationalism https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/heres-h...

tomohawk 7y ago

It's really the wrong question. Do entities all have to justify why they 'belong' on Facebook? What about vox media? How do they justify that they belong? This is just more cancel culture. Facebook will never be successful putting itself in the middle of a culture war.

iongoatb 7y ago

Why? Because Breitbart is more legitimate than CNN. Breitbart focuses on facts and logic, rather than emotions and propaganda. This is coming from a former "liberal" that had to walk away because of the far-left socialist cult that the left has now become. A Harvard study showed that over 93% of news about Trump by the MSM is negative (ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, etc) [https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-harvard-study-cnn-nbc-trump-coverage-93-percent-negative https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-harvard-study-...]. That is unheard of, even in tyrannical regimes that have state-controlled media, like China and Russia. They at least pretend to have political opposition by the elites, to appease the masses. Furthermore, a PEW research poll dove deep into the political divide in the country. When they looked at the average left-leaning person and average right-leaning person, what they found is that the left has moved FAR left on average, while the right has only moved slightly further to the right [http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/10/05162647/10-05-2017-Political-landscape-release.pdf http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/201...]. What we are seeing in today's climate is that JFK's political agenda would be considered far right, rather than traditionally democratic. Such as: 1) Strong foreign policy based on American national interests and values ("America First" from Trump, also seen with JFK) 2) Pro skilled immigration, strong border protection for illegal aliens (Obama, Clinton, Trump) 3) Common-sense progressive policies on domestic social issues If you need anymore convincing, then just check out the Project Veritas bombshell on CNN. Jeff Zucker explicitly told the world what we already implicitly knew: that CNN is an anti-Trump propaganda machine, not a news organization. TL;DR 1. Breitbart is less radical than the MSM, especially CNN, which all have a spot on Facebook News 2. Breitbart may colloquially seem radical because of how far-left the average liberal has become (see Pew research), but perception is not reality. 3. Breitbart is mainstream conservative. Facebook's mission statement is to be a platform "for all ideas", per Zuckerburg, We live in America, and Breitbart is extremely popular - it is consistently ranked #1 for political media. 4. Unlike CNN and their recent expose by Project Veritas, Breitbart does not peddle propaganda. They deliver news - which is why I shut off the MSM after the 2016 election when they were clearly shilling for Clinton. 5. Due to #1, #2, #3, and #4 it deserves to be on Facebook, the platform for all ideas.

chowyuncat 7y ago
Anything that cites Project Veritas as a source should be laughed out of the room.

dekhn 7y ago

Breitbart is a legitimate news agency (you may not like that, but it is). Also, if they left it out lots of people would just howl about how Zuckerberg was catering to liberals. It's as simple as that. Although I'm much more on the "NYTimes is Truth" side, I read Breitbart daily to gain perspective of what people who voted for Trump think. Content moderation and factual determination at internet scale in the face of state-sponsored propaganda and multiple divisive nonfactual news agencies is definitely non-trivial. Zuck has started out with a stated philosophy and is attempting to be consistent with it, while also trying to avoid appearance of liberal bias. Some of the consequences of that will not make many people happy.