Ben Thompson:
This, then, is the deep irony of this controversy: Facebook is receiving a huge amount of criticism for allegedly biasing the news via the empowerment of a team of human curators to make editorial decisions, as opposed to relying on what was previously thought to be an algorithm; it is an algorithm, though — the algorithm that powers the News Feed, with the goal of driving engagement — that is arguably doing more damage to our politics than the most biased human editor ever could.
The fact of the matter is that, on the part of Facebook people actually see — the News Feed, not Trending News — conservatives see conservative stories, and liberals see liberal ones; the middle of the road is as hard to find as a viable business model for journalism (these things are not disconnected).
There are a lot of sides here. Does Facebook have the right to publish news as they see fit? Certainly.
But the central issue is the slow erosion of the traditional journalism model. We traditionally have limits on ownership of news outlets. Limits on the number of newspapers, radio stations, and TV outlets a single entity is allowed to own.
Facebook, Google and, to a much smaller extent, Apple, are testing those limits in a completely new way. In my opinion, the real danger occurs not in Facebook’s approach to news, but in giving any single entity the ability to control too great a slice of it.
Why do we feel we can force one business to do something against its religion or beliefs, yet allow another to do what it wants even at a much larger scale? If we’re going to regulate companies it can’t be as one sided as our liberal media slant is these days.
Indeed.
Remind me again how many conservative new outlets have been called upon by your Democrats to answer for their conservative bias?
Thompson makes a good point. Facebook’s manipulation and censorship are deplorable, but does anyone really click on the “trending” stories?
I use Facebook to see my friend’s cute kids, etc., not to get news. But to the extent I see an interesting article, it’s always from the News Feed, and I click on it based on the person/people who are sharing it.
Trending also means bias. I fail to see the problem here.
All the time. It’s one of the first places I go to.
I did not read the original poster as advocating government action against Facebook; just that the First Amendment be applied equally regardless of viewpoint.
As for myself, in the other Loop story about Facebook this morning, I unequivocally and repeatedly argue against government action.
His implication was that conservatives are being forced to do things “against [their] religion or beliefs”, whereas progressive organizations are not. This is demonstrably not the case.
Interestingly, left out of the discussion was that many of the “news” organizations who were not promoted to the trending box are pretty questionable ones, like Breitbart.
Genuine “trending” reflects the “bias”–or interests–of the friends you have chosen or of others on the social network.
The concern with Facebook’s actions is that it replaces “trending” with its staffers judgment without telling users that that is what it’s doing.
It’s not the bias in and of itself, it’s passing off its bias as reflecting the views of your friends or the network as a whole.
This is manipulative and deceptive.
In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think it’s very important, but as the media landscape changes, it may become more so.
I’ll let the Gnome reply, to avoid the risk that I misread his/her post.
“…the middle of the road is as hard to find as a viable business model for journalism (these things are not disconnected)….” So TOTALLY agree! We’ve long ago stopped giving people the new they need, replaced by the news they want.
I think the key here is the trust people have in a system like Facebook to treat information uniformly. If what is trending in my circle is conservative in nature, they shouldn’t be blocking it and promoting progressive articles instead. The key is trust. If this turns out to be true, a lot of people will start to lose trust in Facebook in a new, more direct way than before.
I think Facebook can bias things however it wants– as long as they’re honest about doing that. For example, Fox is unabashedly conservative, MSNBC is openly liberal, and people seem fine with that because they can turn to whichever source they like. Facebook, unfortunately, has become “the internet” for millions of people and if they’re seeing only one viewpoint, it gives a distorted view of the world.
Also, where’s my safe space?
Some algorithm has to be used to determine trending. Otherwise you’d just see “lunch”, “youtube”, “sun”, “morning” or whatever the spam du jour is. The algorithm also has to try to determine what is actually being referenced and create a summary. I don’t see how it is deceptive to weight source sites based on historical veracity or try to weed out noise.
There is no reason Facebook should be obligated to treat “trending” as whatever keywords are used most.
Does Facebook have the right to publish news as they see fit? Certainly.
Absolutely.
But it’d be nice if, if they are picking-and-choosing, they’d say so; what people dislike is “curated” news that pretends to simply be a reflection of what’s naturally “trending”.
Just like nobody complains that Matt Drudge is biased – because he doesn’t pretend to be anything else.
(n.b. I can’t stand Drudge’s website.
p.s. I wish I could just turn FB “Trending” off entirely, and I’ve already trained it to ignore politics and sports as much as possible.
What the hell does FB think the value add is there?
On reflection, the way “trending” makes no sense as an income generator or customer satisfaction increaser, but does as an opinion driver, makes me more likely to believe they’re fiddling with it as the accusations say. That at least makes the entire feature make some sense.)
As a Stratechery subscriber since he opened his (subscription) doors, I’m sad to say that I will likely terminate my subscription as he increasingly talks about political issues and I don’t find his perspective very interesting. He’s also strugging, I think, to clarify his aggregation theory, which has been his focus over the past year. If FaceBook had been accused of suppressing left wing perspectives during an election season, I’m confident that Ben would be singing from a different part of the hymn book.
This is exactly why I turned off all Google tracking (to the extent possible). While it’s great if Google knows when I search for Apple, I mean the company, but when searching for things that imply belief, it is terrible to get biased search results based on past clicks. I think it is what feeds the increasingly polarized and vitriolic viewpoints on politics, religion, et al. I increasingly rely on duckduckgo for search as it improves daily. And why I will never rely on Facebook for actual news. That’s what Twitter is for 😉
Slow erosion?
This is fundamentally Fox News’ business model, and they’ve been in business for 20 years now.
Facebook isn’t a “journalism” entity. And “a team of human curators to make editorial decisions” is what used to be called ‘the editors’.
Finally, the limits on news outlet ownership have been a joke for a VERY long time. This has nothing to do with Facebook or Apple or Google, so much as it has to do with News Corp, Gannet, or NBCgeneral ElectricViacomTime Warner, or whatever the giant media agglomeration of the day is.
(note, in high school, mid-70’s, I had a history substitute teacher warn us about the dangers posed by coroprate consolidation. His example was Gulf+Western https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_and_Western_Industries )
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