Summary:
Facebook has been accused of censoring conservative news according to a 2016 report. The revelations that came as a result of the report undermined any presumption of Facebook as a neutral pipeline for news, or that the trending news module was a purely algorithmically-driven list of what people were actually talking about.
Allegations:
- Several former Facebook "news curators" told Gizmodo that they were instructed to artificially "inject" selected stories into the trending news module even these stories weren't trending. In some cases, after a topic was injected, it did become the number one trending news topic on Facebook.
- One of the former curators said that,“I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognise the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz".
- Stories about Facebook were instructed not to be included in the trending section at all. “When it was a story about the company, we were told not to touch it,” said one former curator. “It had to be cleared through several channels, even if it was being shared quite a bit. We were told that we should not be putting it on the trending tool.”
Defence:
- Facebook denied the allegations that the team responsible for its trending news section deliberately suppressed conservative news. The company claims that its algorithm simply populates 'topics that have recently become popular on Facebook' in its trending news section.
- Colin Stretch, general counsel at Facebook said that an internal two-week investigation with Thune found "virtually identical" rates of approval of conservative and liberal topics. He further added that the investigation "could not fully exclude the possibility of isolated improper actions or unintentional bias” and that the platform would make changes to trending topics to prevent potential misuse and "to to minimise risks where human judgment is involved”.
- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a meeting with conservative commentators. Later, Facebook clarified its guidelines and its reviews were made to undergo a refresher training “that emphasised content decisions may not be made on the basis of politics or ideology”.