New York Times:
The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee demanded on Tuesday that Facebook explain how it handles news articles in its “trending” list, responding to a report that staff members had intentionally suppressed articles from conservative sources.
In a letter, the chairman, Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, asked Facebook to describe the steps it was taking to investigate the claims and to provide any records about articles that its news curators had excluded or added.
And:
Mr. Thune’s actions raised further questions about the content seen by the 1.6 billion people who regularly use Facebook. The platform’s growing role as an arena for news distribution has raised some concerns that it could have undue influence over the flow of information, but any effort by the federal government to regulate or investigate editorial decisions could run into First Amendment protections.
And:
“The notion of Congress looking into or investigating how a medium of communication decides what to say threatens on its face First Amendment rights,” said Mr. Abrams, a partner at the law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel.
This is an incredible display of arrogance. Will Congress investigate the Washington Post for bias? How about Fox News?
I think the only display of incredible arrogance here is that being displayed by Dave Mark’s comments. This is censorship and discrimination plain and simple. What’s next, search engines that don’t return results for conservative businesses and organizations? Or perhaps government agencies that applying different rules for conservative? Oh wait, that already happened.
It’s not about arrogance, it’s about unlawfulness.
The first amendment lets Washington Post, Fox News, and Facebook to promote any view points they like.
The problem is when media present themselves as being objective when they are not.
Facebook surfaces articles that it claims are “trending” when they are not, and presents as “trending” articles that are not, and they do so based on criteria that are politically slanted. Twitter’s “safety committee” is doing the same thing–censoring views based on content while claiming it is not doing that.
This is hypocritical and manipulative. It is wrong. Customers have every right to feel offended and betrayed. They should send Facebook and Twitter a message that their slanted, censorious conduct is unacceptable.
But Facebook and Twitter (and old media outlets) have their rights too. And the Senate should not trample on them.
Facebook is a private business that is allowed to promote (or exclude) any view it pleases. It has First Amendment rights, like the Washington Post, Fox News, the Teamsters, and the people who made “Hillary: The Movie.”
Citizens have those rights too–and that’s why government can’t apply different rules against conservatives. (At least, it can’t admit to doing so.) Users, however, have no “First Amendment” rights with regard to Facebook.
While I do not think the Senate has a role to play here, I wonder whether users could sue Facebook for fraud.
If Facebook made representations that its “trending” articles were in fact “trending,” and that articles that were not on the list were in fact not “trending,” they broke their promise to users.
The individual stakes–damages–would be quite small, but that doesn’t stop creative class action lawyers.
I’d like to see Facebook pay for deceiving their users. But I’m doubtful that will happen.
Really, the lesson is for users to be vigilant–don’t trust Facebook to curate your news. Find other sources–many of them–and read widely.
So Fox can claim to be “Fair and Balanced” but Facebook isn’t allowed to have it’s own definition of trending?
For what it is worth, the Facebook Trending section is one of the few features of the site I use daily and I see a huge amount of right-wing stories.
Facebook’s customers aren’t the people reading news on Facebook. Its customers are the companies buying ads. I don’t think Facebook has any contractual obligations toward its readers about what news articles get promoted. If its readers don’t like the policies, they can go to a different source. I completely agree with you that the only hope of being accurately informed is to have multiple sources.
I think my initial post answers your question:
Interesting point about who the real “customers” are. I wonder if/how that changes the analysis.
So it would be OK if Facebook removed all trending articles about gay and lesbian rights groups because they are a private business?
I support restricting supposed “news” articles that have no basis in fact.
Sure – and you’ll get back TWICE what you paid them, in damages…oh wait.
The article I read (not on Facebook) was that FB was using their algorithm to determine “trending articles” and then pulled out ones that were hoaxes or blatantly untrue.
If that pulled out more conservative articles than liberal, well, that’s an indication of something else altogether.
Legally, yes, of course. Those who control Facebook may promote any viewpoint they like in exercise of their First Amendment right to freedom of expression. (The First Amendment isn’t absolute, of course, but that’s a different issue.)
Of course, Zuckerberg is a reliable progressive and wouldn’t do that. And he’s cultivating a social network that reflects his progressive values, so I suspect his curators are doing the precise opposite–highlighting “pro” LGBT pieces and subtly obscuring “con” pieces.
Both may be of concern to users expecting objectivity (and transparency), but neither justifies government interference.
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