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FACEBOOK HAS DENIED it prioritises certain news in its trending section after a report had claimed it buried stories that were deemed to be politically conservative.
Its CEO and founder, Mark Zuckerberg, said that there was “no evidence” that the company did this or promote more liberal stories even if they weren’t trending.
“We have rigorous guidelines that do not permit the prioritisation of one viewpoint over another or the suppression of political perspectives,” he said in a Facebook post.
We found no evidence that this report is true. If we find anything against our principles, you have my commitment that we will take additional steps to address it.
The report from Gizmodo quoted a number of former employees whose job it was to curate the section.
In it, they said the team would exclude articles from more conservative news outlets, or include them when mainstream sites like the New York Times and CNN would cover them, and were allowed to include non-trending stories if they deemed them important.
In response, Facebook released a statement explaining how it chooses stories for trending topics.
The trending news section was added back in 2014 in certain countries as a way of making Facebook a better source for news.
In a section titled “how do you protect against bias in the Trending Topics product?” it said that its algorithm only surfaces topics that appear because of “popularity and frequency… and does not consider perspective or politics”.
We have a series of checks and balances in place to help surface the most important popular stories, regardless of where they fall on the ideological spectrum… Facebook does not allow or advise our reviewers to discriminate against sources of any political origin, period.
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Isn’t this the same fella talking with Angela Merkel about prioritising only good news stories about refugees, and censoring all opposition to mass immigration?
“On the sidelines of a United Nations luncheon on Saturday, Merkel was caught on a hot mic pressing Zuckerberg about social media posts about the wave of Syrian refugees entering Germany, the publication reported.
The Facebook CEO was overheard responding that “we need to do some work” on curtailing anti-immigrant posts about the refugee crisis. “Are you working on this?” Merkel asked in English, to which Zuckerberg replied in the affirmative before the transmission was disrupted.”
Where are you quoting from?
Google it. I keep trying to post links but they are not appearing here.
www . youtube.com/watch?v=BJq5rKCe2DI
www . cnbc.com/2015/09/27/angela-merkel-caught-on-hot-mic-pressing-facebook-ceo-over-anti-immigrant-posts.html
www . washingtontimes.com/news/2015/sep/30/angela-merkel-caught-on-hot-mic-confronting-mark-z/
www . breitbart.com/london/2016/01/07/cologne-google-facebook-twitter-yield-german-govt-demand-censor-anti-migrant-hate-speech/
It was all over the news at the time. Dont know how you could have missed it.
Bias, Facebook, surely you jest?
Like the fact anything relating to Turkey or Erdogan in a negative manner gets lost in the ether…. Add Merkel to that too bitte
The media are covering for Hillary and everybody know’s it. Refusing to dig up her past while doing so to Trump is unfair and biased reporting.
Suckbook
facebook regularly censors the news and tries to steer public opinion in a certain direction. i remember before there was an article critical of zuckerberg and his promised suppression of anti migration material, sure enough FB auto blocked any post or message with a link to the article in it.
but at the same time people still use fb in their billions, that will not change.
Sure…..you don’t…. Sure some will believe you…those that believe everything….
He looks like a young Adolf Kelly, both with the same greedy principles…..and the need for Power.
For some reason on my facebook homepage, the trending news items on the right have disappeared completely!
Give him his oculus rift there and it’s like he’s up to some kinky vr
“Facebook denies burying stories in its trending news section”.
What’s “trending news”? Is it news about trends?
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