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Mark Zuckerberg: 'No Evidence' Facebook Staff Suppressed Stories With Conservative Viewpoints (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Mark Zuckerberg has issued a statement in response to the controversy alleging that Facebook staff intentionally prevented stories with a conservative viewpoint from appearing in the site's Trending Topics section. "We take this report very seriously and are conducting a full investigation to ensure our teams upheld the integrity of this product," Zuckerberg writes on Facebook. "We have 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." Zuckerberg says he will invite "leading conservatives and people from across the political spectrum" to discuss the matter in the coming weeks, with the aim of having a "direct conversation about what Facebook stands for and how we can be sure our platform stays as open as possible." Earlier today, more evidence surfaced to support Gawker's two recent reports that claimed editors manipulate the trending news. Facebook published a blog post explaining how Trending Topics on its platform works, insisting there's no discrimination against sources of any political origin.
Zuckerberg's 'principles' involve stealing passwords and reading other people's email.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It matters because they claimed that "trending" was determined by computer algorithms that analyzed what people were actually talking about, but that turned out to be a lie: they were instead determined by people, who necessarily have a bias.
It matters because it artificially shapes how people see the world. Facebook isn't just "a news site" it's also a site that - in theory - shows you how your friends view the world. Except it turns out that conservative views were being censored on Facebook.
They're not alone. Anyone who's seen how Twitter deals with its trends (which are also conceptually algorithmic but in reality are clearly curated as they'll block certain things from trending) and the new Twitter Moments feature will notice a distinct liberal bias there, as well.
If Facebook were like Slashdot where the entire point was people were explicitly picking certain stories, no one would care. But Facebook pretended that the "trending" feature was showing what people were actually talking about on Facebook, and that turned out to be false. It was instead a curated news feed with a liberal bias.
The IRS targeted conservative groups, not liberal ones.
IRS Targeting Controversy
If you are going to post a link to support your argument, you may want to make sure it actually supports your argument. That Wikipedia articles says it targeted both liberal and conservative non-profit corporations looking for violations of the laws governing non-profits.
Nah, the Liberals are so used to it, they stopped complaining. The conservatives own the media (the traditional media at least) and complain endlessly about how they cover themselves.
Must be the same reason that vote fraud (especially when illegal immigrants vote) overwhelmingly favors Democrats.
Yet it's always the Democrats that are pushing for vote fraud reduction, and Republicans putting in Diebold and such, while claiming there's no voter fraud..
The last time I looked it was Republicans who were whipping up a panic over voter fraud and demanding photo IDs to combat this even though study after study had shown that voter fraud is not a huge issue in the US. Then a few Republican functionaries went on record and explained in interviews how several conservatives running for office had benefited from the photo ID requirement because people less likely to vote Republican had been required to jump through flaming hoops to get a photo ID. Now, what is the real problem? Voter fraud which is pretty much non existent? Or is it Republicans making sure that people likely to vote Democrat have a hard time getting their hands on a photo ID? Not that this is a debate I even understand (in the sense: why is this even an issue?). Where I come from your photo ID is something you need to have to make use of public services so people usually get one in their very early teens. Kids get a social security card which they use until they learn how to drive a scooter at 15 or a car at 17 and after that everybody uses their drivers license as voter ID except for the 3% of or so of the population that does not have a driver's license, usually for some medical reason. I can relate much more to the discussions in the US about gerrymandering by means of things like the creation of ridiculously shaped voting districts because that is one shenanigan that political parties in my country practice with the same amount of enthusiasm as their counterparts in the US.
And Chelsey Clinton is giving speeches about how her mother will finally outlaw guns now that Scalia is dead and there is an opening on the Supreme Court.
I don't think you can call it a conspiracy if they are telling people that is their plan.
Video Feel free to ignore the news article with it, just watch the video.
I read it. It looked like the issue was people defacing BLM posts with ALM posts. It wasn't the message that was put up, but the destruction of what other's posted that was the specific objection. Perhaps you need to read your own links.
Read it again, you obviously missed the "We're supporting BLM cause reasons" bit. Or do you need me to draw the exact quote out for you? Reminder that those free speech walls mean that people can do whatever they want, and in turn are supposed to be free from repercussions?
At the peak of crack, it was more used by whites than blacks. The publicity around Blacks was vilifying Black people, not crack, and using that as excuse to target Blacks for a colorblind problem. That you reject reality doesn't change it.
We're not talking about peak. We're talking about what said culture created, that you don't even know what the reality of that period was or how loud those mouth pieces were is far more telling. I'll help you out though, go and start reading news paper articles on al sharpton and jessie jackson from 1993-1998 and their cries for more police. Don't worry when that reality bites you in the ass.
Om, nomnomnom...
Lumping the two together is a red herring used by the IRS and its liberal defenders to cover up the fact that the Obama Administration used the machinery of government to harass their political opponents.