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.

Comments

Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[goombah99]

"We have found no evidence that this report is true" may be the contrapositive of we have found evidence it is false but it's not the same thing

Re:Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

They investigated themselves and found no wrongdoing.

Re:Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[rahvin112]

So what? Again a non-fucking story. He can run that trending thing however the fucking company wants under current law.

The GOP wants to reinstate the fairness doctrine in broadcast mediums if they want this fixed. Course that's a double edge sword that results in people getting both sides of every story and THAT would mean the end of the GOP. The entire party and it's doctrine relies on people being misinformed by an echo chamber constantly reinforcing the same idea over and over until the consumers believe it.

Re:Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what's funny?

When's the last time you saw a headline like "so and so suppressed Liberal/Progressive viewpoints"? Or "IRS directed to target outspoken Liberal/Progressive organizations"? Yeah, neither have I. It's always the Conservative viewpoints targeted by censorship or intimidation of some kind. Those are techniques people use when they are not secure in their own views and feel threatened by opposing views.

Why it's as if one side plays dirtier than the other. Must be the same reason that vote fraud (especially when illegal immigrants vote) overwhelmingly favors Democrats. Understand, I think both parties are toxic and this government is a cancer on the nation, and like all cancers it just doesn't want to stop growing, but still I cannot help but notice these things.

Re:Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[mellon]

I have plenty of evidence that the report is false, in the form of people bloviating on my timeline.

Re:Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[epyT-R]

No, they're the words of someone trying to hide his political views. of course, it's his site, he can do what he wants, but it's a dickish move to feign objectivity. I mean, the guy started fwd.us after all.

Re:Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[ShanghaiBill]

Bunch of stuffed shirts, but they got shit done and cooperated with Democrats.

Do you mean when they cooperated, and ran up $18 trillion in debt? Or when they cooperated and launched the dumbest war in history, with bipartisan support? I think I prefer gridlock.

Re:Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[epyT-R]

Actually, there can be multilateral sides to a story. A 'fairness' doctrine would not be any friendlier to the truth because the truth is usually not 'fair.' Also, the GOP does not have a monopoly on echo chambers and hugboxes. Your post is proof of that.

Re:Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Conservative values are not a single "thing". Treating real problems as simplistic, is childish.

Re:Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[epyT-R]

Well, I hope not. Individual rights are important. Without them, citizens end up receiving inhuman treatment in manufactured 'class struggles' as we've seen in the various 'people's republics' during the cold war.

I am confused by your choice of words and lack of context. You meant that as long as people have free speech, they can criticize the flaws in others' statements? That's a good thing. This right is needed for democracy to have a shot at functioning.

These days both sides are supporting fake 'religious liberty.' The neocons support christians as they always have, and the left supports muslims, even when they rape women. I guess islamophobia is a worse sin than rape in the oppression olympics.

Re:Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[davester666]

You need to immediately forward your message to the head of the RNC.

Re:Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Conservative values are dead. But faux victimhood will keep pretend religious liberty and freedom to hate alive for a little longer.

And Venezuela, Greece, and Detroit didn't run out of other people's money.

Re: Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[bursch-X]

Have you committed a crime that kept you from accessing the Internet for that last few years?

Re: Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[bursch-X]

The left replaces religion with other dogmas and collectivism like radical feminism, cis white male original sin, oppression Olympics and class struggle as in communism. Potato, potato. Same tactics.

Re:Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except this is absolutely catastrophically wrong. You might want to look up the Israeli Kibbutz systems as well as agrarian christianity for some examples of strongly left-leaning religious political movements and organizations.

The reason people get confused over this is confirmation bias. You have a chip on your shoulder about religion so you look only at those topics where religions tend to favor the rightwingers (family focus, traditionalism) and ignore the values they hold that have traditionally inspired the left before the left fractured into inter-warring tribes of people taking offense at everything (charity, wealth redistribution)

As to the last statement, look up the situation of Scandinavian state churches. You'll cook up some ad hoc hypothesis about why they are not true representations but that is because your definition is so biased as to not merit discussion.

Re: Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're American left, which is decidedly centrist. The European leftists, on the otherhand, are giving away their countries.

That isn't just the European leftists; the American left is giving away the U.S. by refusing to enforce any immigration laws.

Re: Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[jmac_the_man]

He can run that trending thing however the fucking company wants under current law.

You're correct on this point, although the rest of post is bullshit.

Statistically speaking, all conservatives realize that CBS, NBC, and ABC are biased against conservatives and Republicans at least 90% of the time. Also statistically speaking, no conservative wants some kind of government mandate for them to cut it out. They're private businesses and can do what they want. (PBS and NPR are different because they're taxpayer funded.)

Facebook is also a private business and also shouldn't be mandated by the government to change how Trending Topics work. The reason the story is important is because people need to know that Trending Topics are full of shit in the same way the network news is.

Re:Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[Gadget_Guy]

I'll leave this here.

Why is it that whenever anyone uses the phrase "I'll leave this here" it almost invariably links to an irrelevant video. I think that people do it to appear that they are answering a question or providing evidence in the hope that nobody will actually watch the video and realise that they have got nothing.

In this case the video did not even come close to providing the requested citation for the claim that "the left supports muslims, even when they rape women". In fact, all it showed was a video of someone asking "how can we fight an ideological war with weapons... how can you ever win this thing if you don't address it ideologically". Like you responding with an irrelevant video that mentions neither the left or rape, the panelist ignores the question and goes on a rant about how it doesn't matter that most Muslims are peaceful, aren't radical and that they aren't the enemy.

It seems to be a common school of thought in certain ideologies that you don't need to address the question or topic being discussed as long as you answer forcefully. If you can't convince people with a logical argument then do it with a loud one.

Re: Zuckerman suppresses evidence?

[Gadget_Guy]

Have you committed a crime that kept you from accessing the Internet for that last few years?

Assuming that you haven't also committed a crime, you should be able to link to evidence that you have found on the Internet that the left supports rapist Muslims. That is unless you are just bluffing and going by your gut feeling instead of actual facts.

And if your argument is that "neocons support christians as they always have, and the left supports muslims, even when they rape women", does that mean that neocons support Christians even when they are pedophiles? It's not as if there hasn't been a lot of covering up of priests abusing alter boys over the years.

And no, that is not what I think. I just said it to point out the inconsistency of your statement. I believe that all people would condemn rapists and pedophiles no matter who they are (with the obvious exception of other rapists and pedophiles).

Sounds like Hillary

[Anonymous Coward]

Pedantic hair splitting and obfuscation.

Fucking liars.

Re:GOP has too much hateful speech

[Anonymous Coward]

If you define anything you disagree with as hate speech you get to the situation we have here. Self justification for dummies.

Re:GOP has too much hateful speech

[Rakshasa Taisab]

True, and everything our opponents say is hateful by definition.

Why is it important?

[damn_registrars]

Facebook is a private website. They are free to post whatever they like. Why would it matter if stories of a particular political alignment are less likely than others to show up? There is no shortage of other places where you can get news, either...

Re: Why is it important?

[Bartles]

Imagine if you had paid Facebook a lot of money to place ads in these popular trending stories, only to find out they aren't actually popular and trending, but selected for placement by Facebook employees.

Re:Why is it important?

[physicsphairy]

Microsoft bundling IE in its capacity as the by far dominant provider of desktop operating systems was considered an anti-trust violation.

Now what about the by far most dominant social network bundling a particular political platform for its users? Is there no ethical problem with that?

I agree that FB's actions are legal and even constitutionally protected. But if you find it unnerving when companies hire lobbyists to write laws in their favor, you should probably find it even more unnerving that FB may be surreptitiously packaging the specific issues and views on which people vote.

I wonder what the monetary value to Trump/Hillary would be to suppressing news helpful to their opponent, and what sort of favorable legislation that could buy FB in return.

Re:Of course it's true

[Z80a]

With the wrong ideas on the right way you probably can make any group of people go stupid.
You probably can make the Doberman Pinscher Club of Greater Milwaukee suddenly turn into a nazi party by just implanting enough wrong ideas the right way.

Re:Of course it's true

[AK Marc]

Yeah, they mention that you are more likely to be killed with your own gun by a stranger than use it against a stranger in self defense, and all the conservatives lose their shit. You are more likely to accidentally shoot someone than shoot it at someone in self defense. Someone that wants to lengthen their life would be better served by staying away from guns, than believing in the illogical belief they are "safer" with a gun than without.

The liberals are the logical ones around guns, and it's the conservatives who can't muster up logic.

When you've lost the Guardian. . . .

[Salgak1]

. . . .which is no defender of the Right (as it prides itself as Progressive), the argument of objectivity and algorithms pretty much fails.

To wit:

https://www.theguardian.com/te...

Found nothing against FB principals

[WoodstockJeff]

"If we find anything against our principles, you have my commitment that we will take additional steps to address it."

So, it if wasn't against Zuckerman's principals, it wasn't wrong.

Logical Liberal about Guns? haha

[s.petry]

The argument for the 2nd amendment is not about self defense, but liberals tend to frame it that way. They could read history, you know, like the Federalist Papers, Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution and frame the argument correctly. The people must be able to overthrow a tyrannical government, hence we must maintain the right to bear arms.

Libertarians understand the historical logic for the second amendment and further understand risk and responsibility. Meanwhile the progressives feverishly attempt to convince everyone that the nanny state is the only way to save humanity and that humans are incapable of making decisions or understanding risk.

Liberals are logical my ass, they like to play make believe. History repeatedly demonstrates that society is never fixed by massive governments. Never, ever, not one time has it happened.