Allegations of bias in the social media giant's Trending news feeds are flaring as Facebook tries to forge deeper ties in Washington.
Washington’s leading Republicans mounted an aggressive campaign on Tuesday targeting Facebook for the way it handles news stories, the latest front in the party’s fight to highlight perceived liberal bias.
In a presidential election year marked by the growing importance of social media — especially in helping fuel the rise of Donald Trump — Republicans found themselves seething in response to allegations that Facebook’s employees had excluded news stories by conservative outlets from appearing in the Trending section of its users’ daily news feeds.
Source: Politico
The censorship that Facebook is imposing is no different than the type of censorship that celebrated news outlets perform on a daily basis.
I'd say it's different. It's understood by most readers that a newspaper has editorial control over the stories it writes. Facebook pretends to be an open, user-driven platform. But the allegations are saying they are or were trying to get away with editorial control while still pretending to be user-driven.
I wonder if the sneaky political slant of facebook was for strictly business reasons or for personal political opinions of the people who editorialized it.
I only meant in the sense that it is private organizations doing whatever they can to increase their bottom line.
I don't disagree that Facebook pretends to be an open, user-driven platform; at the same time, conventional news agencies also pretend to be open and unbiased.
As for why, I think a little of both played a part but would place more emphasis on the former.
I also think the reason was a bit of both. The editors and writers who were producing content that facebook didn't suppress probably cared about the special chance to proselytize, but people running facebook are probably doing these types of things mainly for the profits.