Senate GOP Launches Inquiry Into Facebook's News Curation (gizmodo.com)

Michael Nunez, reporting for Gizmodo: The US Senate Commerce Committee -- which has jurisdiction over media issues, consumer protection issues, and internet communication -- has sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg requesting answers to questions it has on its trending topics section. The letter comes after Gizmodo on Monday reported on allegations by one former news curator, who worked for Facebook as a contractor, that the curation team routinely suppressed or blacklisted topics of interest to conservatives. That report also included allegations from several former curators that they used an "injection tool" to add or bump stories onto the trending module. The letter asks that Facebook "arrange for your staff including employees responsible for trending topics to brief committee staff on this issue." The letter was signed by Chairman for the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Senator John Thune (R) from South Dakota.

Comments

So what?

[PublicSchill]

It's not like ABC News, Fox News, and all the other major news networks don't do the same thing... Why does it matter if Facebook does it? The news industry in the USA has a reputation of being garbage. Why investigate Facebook for keeping with the low standards of everyone else?

Re:So what?

[pak9rabid]

Well, if Facebook is smart, they'll bring this up and drag the rest of the fuckers through the mud with them.

Re:So what?

[__aaclcg7560]

Because it made the headlines that Facebook may have a policy to suppress conservative views as a company strategy. The confirms the Republican narrative that only their views are being censored by the mainstream media, giving politicians the opportunity to play the victim game. Never mind all the free press given to Donald Trump during this election cycle.

Re:So what?

[Mycroft-X]

Because if something is being presented as being strictly based on popular interest, but is actually based on private interests, then that is misleading consumers. The other "news" organizations haven't been accused of advertising one methodology for presenting stories but actually using another.

It would be like a polling organization saying it took a random phone survey of 1,000 likely voters to get its results, but then was caught manipulating their definition of the term "likely" to distort their resulting data. They generally like to leave the distortion to the data interpreters, not bake it into the data itself.

Re:So what?

[ausekilis]

Why investigate Facebook for keeping with the low standards of everyone else?

Because millions of people don't sign into the websites of those news agencies each day to be fed the agenda of those organizations.

Advertising works. The message being sent to millions of people worldwide is curated by a handful of people under one organization that isn't the gov't. This is them saying "Bullshit! that's our job!"

Re:So what?

[Spy Handler]

Because it's well understood that the stories reported by Fox News and NBC News are whatever Fox and NBC deem newsworthy. They don't pretend that the stories they've picked are "Trending" or "Shared" amongst regular users.

Basically they're being dishonest. If Facebook wants to push its political viewpoint then they should just come right out and say so. Don't pretend it's all done by an algorithm based on only popularity.

Re:So what?

[SuricouRaven]

Even if it's true though, it isn't corruption. It's not illegal for a company to decide what to post on their own website, or to manually adjust their algorithms in real time. I'm sure facebook would do that at a minimum to prevent embarassing topics from hitting the top, like openly racist columns or conspiracy theories.

Re:So what?

[fropenn]

I like Sanders, but he's a good example of the point I was trying to make. The act of running for president has pressured and / or forced him to do things that he otherwise would not have done - like calling Hillary Clinton "unqualified" to be president. And we all make mistakes and have regrets, but to me this is the very nature of the act of running for president and the intense pressure and scrutiny it produces - it would do the same to me, and likely to you, too.

Re:So what?

[pseudorand]

> I'm voting Libertarian. Don't blame me for what happens when people elect the unqualified and the scoundrels to office, I vote, just not for any of them.

That attitude is what gets us into this mess. Voting takes you as little as 5 minutes if your jurisdiction allows mail-in ballots, and not really much longer if you have to actually go to the polls. You think you can get a worthwhile government with that sort of minimal effort? No, you get exactly what you paid for -- someone else's very poor choice of elected officials.

If you have any confidence in your views about how the country should be run you have to find a candidate (or run yourself), advocate for him or her with everyone you know and enlist others to advocate with you. And then work on everyone you don't know too. That's a LOT of work. At least a full time job and then some. So choose among the electable candidates or field your own if you think someone you like have a shot. But don't just vote for someone you know will loose and blame the rest of us.

Democracy is ugly and messy and hard, but I haven't thought of a better solution (except pseudorand for emperor, of course, but how do I get you all to agree to that? ;).

Re:So what?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

This has a name -- "US Derangement Syndrome", where every ill of the world is traced back to the US, then tracer stops tracing, dusts his hands off, and declares "US evul"!

False advertising?

[mi]

Why does it matter if Facebook does it?

Though all news-sources profess objectivity, we know, they are run by fallible humans, who are bound to act on their own impulses and agendas.

Facebook, however, implied — or, maybe, even explicitly stated — that its "trending" module is driven by an objective computer-algorithm.

These claims appear false now, which may open them to legal charges of false advertising.

There is a difference

[SuperKendall]

Yes, most news outlets pick and choose what to report on, and all of them have a partisan bent (which is nice to hear you admit since so many on Slashdot claim most news stations are "objective").

However is does seem like there is an important and insidious difference. While news stations choose what they THINK is news, Facebook KNOWS what is news because of links people are sharing and what people are talking about - and knowing what is important to many people, they purposefully exclude any items that are important to lots of conservatives.

On a site that is supposed to represent the curation of your interests and friends, it seems like rather a betrayal to bury something that you and other people like you find important.

I would say the same thing regardless of what was being suppressed. I could see and agree with Facebook injecting at times news it thought was important and should be more widely seen (even if that itself had a partisan bent) but it's quite a lot different to censor the spread of something popular because of ideology.

Are you serious?

[ilsaloving]

Do they not have anything better to do? What's wrong, is Bengazi not getting sufficient attention anymore, so now it's time for a new witchhunt?

Fox has been doing far worse for years, why arn't they being investigated?

Re:Typical Republican Bull

[Straif]

They'll investigate Facebook for bias but not Fox News.

They're investigating Facebook for what is effectively false advertising. Claiming that their "trending" feature is an actual representation of trending stories amongst users and not a filtered and modified list of stories of personal interest of a select few reviewers. If it was just about bias where are the requests for MSNBC and CNN to appear?

They'll investigate Clinton for operating an email server, but not Rice or Powell, who also operated their own email server.

They're investigating Clinton for storing classified and top secret information outside of legal channels and neither Rice of Powell had their own servers. Rice barely used email at all (though some of her aides did) and Powell came in when the rules allowed for outside services (but not for classified info and as of today no one has pointed to any classified info in Powell's emails) as long as a .gov email address was cc'd; a practive he claims to have followed and no one has been able to show otherwise. He was also at least partially responsible for forcing the State Dept to update their email systems because apparently they were so antiquated at the time as to be more of a hindrance.

The Madness Spreads

[SuperKendall]

Here's the reality. Clinton and Trump are both historically disliked.

How can you be so dense as to conflate results with actions?

Clinton and Trump are, yes, both widely disliked.

But the media is mostly soft on Hillary, and very harsh on Trump. The *reality* is disconnected from what the media attempts to MAKE reality.

Now it is true that thanks to Sanders, there have been some more widely reported negatives about Hillary. But it's still been VERY soft compared to Hillary.

Because Trump hasn't made them look stupid enough

[PopeRatzo]

Senate GOP Launches Inquiry Into Facebook's News Curation

I can't imagine what laws the GOP thinks Facebook has broken. You wonder how anyone could have made Congress even less popular than it was under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, but somehow Republicans have managed to leverage rank stupidity like this to accomplish that feat.

Will the GOP congress propose that there be equal-time rules for websites? Is there a floor beneath which the GOP will not sink? Stay tuned. The convention is still months away.