Facebook Is Tweaking Trending Topics To Counter Charges of Bias (recode.net)

An anonymous reader writes: Facebook has said once again in an open letter to Sen. John Thune, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, that its Trending Topics section is free of any political bias or manipulation. But in response to Gizmodo's report that Facebook employees were suppressing conservative news stories, Facebook is revamping how editors find trending stories. "We could not fully exclude the possibility of isolated improper actions or unintentional bias in the implementation of our guidelines or policies," Facebook general Counsel Colin Stretch wrote. Of course, Facebook is going to train the human editors who work on their trending section; they're also going to abandon several automated tools it used to find and categorize trending news in the past. Recode provides some examples, writing, "[Facebook] will no longer use its "1K list," a group of 1,000 websites it used to help verify headlines." Facebook will also get rid of several top publications, including the New York Times and CNN.

Comments

Biased

[mwvdlee]

So in summary, Facebook is going to become biased in order to prevent being labeled as biased.

Re:Biased

[mfearby]

Which is why I don't use Facebook as a source of news. I only use it to keep in touch with people I know, and ignore the rest of whatever else it offers.

Re:Biased

[Opportunist]

I'm not really a friend of that false "left-right" dichotomy. "You're left? So you're a commie!" No. For the same reason that someone who's right leaning isn't a Fascist.

What I despise is those "new left", that's about as despicable as the "new right" we had a while ago now, that emerged, which are religiously fanatic do-gooders. PC-bullshit spewing, safe-space needing special snowflakes that come up with solutions trying to find a problem. Who ensure that you can't tell no joke anymore because someone, somewhere could maybe somehow be offended by it.

"What's the opposite of Christopher Reeves?"
"Christopher Walken"

But you can't tell that! That's offensive! To cripples. No, wait, you can't say that word anymore either. They're disabled. No, wait, they're not, they're "differently able" now. Or maybe they are not anymore and we have a new bullshit word now for it, sorry, I don't really waste my time keeping up with bullshit.

Fuck that. And the PC snowflakes while we're at it.

That's what I'm talking about. These bullshitters are not about "mind your own buisiness", they are EXACTLY the same ilk as the other religious idiots from the right side of the spectrum trying to dictate what I may or may not say, think or do, not based on some real requirements for coexistence. One take their moral high ground from the whims of their imaginary buddy, one from the imagined "offense" someone MIGHT feel when he's told that reality doesn't conform to his (or her, their, hir or whatever fucked up mangled pronoun is now correct to use so I don't "oppress" someone by assuming his, her, its, whatevershit's gender) whims.

Fuck them both. Lock them in a room and hand them enough ammo to shoot each other.

Whoever loses
We win.

Re:FB as news source

[Feyshtey]

Unfortunately it seems an appreciable number of US youth do get their political information from FB, Twitter and other such apps. They get a snarky 200-ish character post about an important issue and act as if they are actually informed. What's worse, they act on it with passion, and charge off to the voting booth or a protest or a boycott.