Facebook routinely suppresses conservative news

Discussion in 'Stock Market Forum' started by baudwalk, May 10, 2016.

  1. baudwalk

    baudwalk Senior Investor

    Joined:
    May 2015
    Posts:
    1,459
    Likes Received:
    13

    With the political scene heating up, conservative news stories appearing in Facebook's news streams are being supressed. Zuckerberg is well-known for his liberal political views. Former Facebook staffers are spilling the beans on the directions to suppress conservative points of views such as those appearing on Drudge Report and Fox News. With some 1.5 billion views a month, the potential influence is huge. From my perspective, $FB as a corporation has a right to fiddle with what is posted but I believe its political posture should be made known in terms of a policy statement. Unlike newspaper editorials and endorsements which reflect the political stance of the newspaper owners, algorithms aren't on public display. It is up to shareholders to continue holding shares or not, and it is up to users to decide whether to continue membership or not. Full disclosure: I am not, nor have ever or will be a member, of $FB; I don't like its instruciveness.
     
  2. baudwalk

    baudwalk Senior Investor

    Joined:
    May 2015
    Posts:
    1,459
    Likes Received:
    13
    http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/09/facebook-workers/
    No surprise really, but Facebook now strongly refutes the claims in the Gizmodo article. The article suggests to me of someone who protests too much. I can't imagine what an ex-employee would have to gain by spreading such a story. The news isn't significant to sway the stock price if someone were trying to short the stock. If you are a $FB user, the two sides of the news may be worth reading to raise your sensitivity level to bullfeathers floating in the air.
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2016
  3. admin

    admin Administrator Staff Member

    Joined:
    Feb 2014
    Posts:
    9,592
    Likes Received:
    9
    Facebook employ 12,000+ people.....if it was open policy to work in such a way I cant imagine all of those employees agreeing and not disputing it.

    I suppose it could be mixed in with the huge amount of case studies and social experimenting they do, like the one they did with showing people certain types of material and monitoring the reactions and moods of those people as result. For example lots of fluffy kitty videos and things that made people laugh and smile gave the desired results of people generally appearing happier in their facebook statuses during that time period and visa versa with less cheerful content.

    There is quite a few "experiments" they've ran which are often an interesting read :

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/t...-in-news-feed-experiment-stirring-outcry.html
     
  4. admin

    admin Administrator Staff Member

    Joined:
    Feb 2014
    Posts:
    9,592
    Likes Received:
    9
    More On the topic :

    Facebook has denied reports that it censors conservative publications from its “trending topics”.
    A report by Gizmodo said staff who aggregated content for Facebook were encouraged to ignore news from fringe conservative sites such as Breitbart until it appeared on more mainstream sites such as CNN.


    Tom Stocky, the company’s vice president of search, wrote in a Facebook post that “we take these reports extremely seriously, and have found no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true”. He added that what was being alleged would be not be “technically feasible”.


    He wrote: “We have in place strict guidelines for our trending topic reviewers as they audit topics surfaced algorithmically. Reviewers are required to accept topics that reflect real world events, and are instructed to disregard junk or duplicate topics, hoaxes or subjects with insufficient sources. Facebook does not allow or advise our reviewers to systematically discriminate against sources of any ideological origin and we’ve designed our tools to make that technically not feasible.”



    Read More... https://www.theguardian.com/technol...k-denies-censoring-conservative-trending-news
     
  5. baudwalk

    baudwalk Senior Investor

    Joined:
    May 2015
    Posts:
    1,459
    Likes Received:
    13
    FWIW, I usually listen to a morning talk show with a conservative bent. Apparently $FB bias isn't limited to the news. Numerous callers insist that their posts that mention anything critical against the regime are soon deleted. One person cited posting a item about Hillary Clinton hiring an illegal immigrant as a maid years ago, when in Arkansas (I believe), well kniwn, and the post was deleted in 20 minutes.
     
  6. admin

    admin Administrator Staff Member

    Joined:
    Feb 2014
    Posts:
    9,592
    Likes Received:
    9
    That's crazy isn't it, can you imagine the resources needed to supposedly vet/moderate the quantity of updates surrounding those topics. My personal view would probably reside on general moderation being mistaken for political bias. For example someone posts something, one of their friends secretly reports it as offensive, facebook see the subject matter and remove no questions asked because of the quantity of the posts on those subjects that are being reported etc.

    Having said that, nothing would surprise me now days :D
     
  7. baudwalk

    baudwalk Senior Investor

    Joined:
    May 2015
    Posts:
    1,459
    Likes Received:
    13
    As was pointed out in the Gizmodo article, algorithms are doing the editing/deletion. Employees are (apparently) tasked with tuning the algorithms, but obviously I have no knowledge of the inner workings. However, it wouldn't surprise me. Where there is smoke, there is usually at least a flicker of a flame. The analogy: Living in the woods myself (really), when I smell pine wood smoke, I start looking. If I smell smoke for more than 15 minutes and it has gotten stronger, I call the fire department.

    Back to algorithms for a minute. They have proliferated throughout the investing community. On many smaller investment web sites, often surfacing as links in StockTwits and elsewhere gathered from news scrapers, computerized formulaic writing assembles sentences and paragraphs using statistical data on price changes, earnings reports and other lIke data. A review of sentence construction and punctuation clearly shows the defects of automation. Looking for words, word combinations or words near other words is child's play. Such word algorithms in use by Facebook would be easy. (Look at the hints for constructing better Google searches for examples of using their algorithms in your own searches.)
     
  8. baudwalk

    baudwalk Senior Investor

    Joined:
    May 2015
    Posts:
    1,459
    Likes Received:
    13
    Last edited: May 11, 2016
  9. JR Ewing

    JR Ewing Super Moderator Staff Member

    Joined:
    Feb 2014
    Posts:
    4,950
    Likes Received:
    39
    Zuck is a young liberal who has led a charmed (and certainly sheltered) life, to say the least.

    It's no surprise to me that they're not only a "progressive" bunch, but that they're apparently in bed with the DNC, the Obama admin, Soros orgs, et al. The left loves to use the media to promote their own agendas and suppress and shout down opposition.
     
  10. nytegeek

    nytegeek Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 2015
    Posts:
    75
    Likes Received:
    0
    Yeah, I'm not buying it. I don't wear a tin foil hat. Oh, and by the way, the mean landing was real, and the Earth isn't flat.
     

Share This Page