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Facebook Offers Political Bias Training In Wake Of Trending Controversy (gizmodo.com)
Michael Nunez, reporting for Gizmodo:Facebook is adding political scenarios to its orientation training following concerns, first reported by Gizmodo, that workers were suppressing conservative topics in its Trending news section. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, announced the change during an interview with conservative leader Arthur Brooks, president of the prominent conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. Brooks also attended a private meeting between Facebook executives and prominent conservative leaders following the controversy. "We had an ex-contractor on that team who accused us of liberal bias," Sandberg said during the interview. "Frankly, it rang true to some people because there is concern that Silicon Valley companies have a liberal bias. We did a thorough investigation, and we didn't find a liberal bias."
...the NRA did a thorough investigation, and didn't find a conservative bias.
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We did a thorough investigation, and we didn't find a liberal bias.
Biased group looks at self, finds no bias.
Maybe because what is left and what is liberal is rapidly diverging this election season. Hard to tell a liberal apart from a conservative these days.
trump is adding political scenarios to its orientation training following concerns, first reported by trump, that trumps were suppressing trump topics in its Trending news section. trump, trump's chief operating officer, announced the change during an interview with conservative leader trump, president of the prominent trump think tank the trump Enterprise Institute. trump also attended a private meeting between trump executives and prominent conservative leaders following the controversy. "trump had an ex-trump on that team who accused us of trump bias," trump said during the interview. "Frankly, it rang true to some people because there is concern that trump companies have a trump bias. trump did a thorough investigation, and trump didn't find a trump bias."
If they found no bias, why are they adding the training?
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That'll show them.
Everyone knows that the truth has a strong bias toward whichever political party we happen to support. Any investigation of bias can also take this into account and therefore show it does not exist. However, it also means we can perceive bias and there can be actual bias where others do not intend to be acting in a biased way.
Real communication is about getting past talking points and ad hominem attacks, of course. About questioning our own beliefs and those of our fellow human beings, and building compromises that drive society forward. About questioning our own biases and being able to work with those whose biases are different. The best is almost always the enemy of the good, in large part because we will always find much more disagreement over what is best.
Real lawyers write in C++
Someone else can make a conservative social network then we can all go to our respective corners.
I suspect that the alleged bias was the result of the bifurcation of "conservative" policy rhetoric. There are some conservative topics that are sensible and traditional, while others are so reactionary as to be utterly baseless. It's ok to be reactionary when you feel that your culture is being dismantled, but don't expect Facebook to promote your shrieks.
Before the inevitable "liberal media" or "corrupt repubs" debate starts, let me point out that it's not illegal for a company to have a "liberal bias" or "conservative bias". But having that perception out there could affect the bottom line.
So Facebook doesn't want to lose any of their revenue (advertisers) or their product (users) over this issue. That's all they care about, and in fairness they're a public company so that's all they should care about. No social issues or any other touchy-feely crap. Revenue, period.
So they're walking the tightwire to get through until this blows over. All of what is coming out of Ms. Sandberg's mouth is geared toward that one goal, in the same vein as how they handled privacy violations they committed since the company was founded (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook).
I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias. -Stephen Colbert
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Well, no surprise.
It take a very trained and objective mind to detect self-bias - and most people cannot do it.
Self-bias takes the form of 'TRUTH', and assumes the legitimacy of fact, to the person with it.
This is a common factor in fanatic religious belief, fanatic political belief, fanatic -anything- belief,
and will not be simply pointed at and disappear.
So looking for it requires a healthy dose of skepticism, and a real drive for the truth, using logic...
not psychology or sociology or middle-management guidelines...
Fixing it is often a lost cause, because of the 'self-' part....
Maybe there is a bias - and it exists because the two political factions are not mirror images of each other. Perhaps one of them actually does buy into more conspiracy theories, or their publications do peddle more lies? It could be that even if you run a perfectly objective fact-checking filter it'll appear to favor one side over the other, because that side is, in general, more honest?
Facebook Offers Political Bias Training
Why do they need Political Bias Training? They're already quite good at it!
Logic, fact and intellectual discourse all have a well known liberal bias. To counter those I am offering several new training courses including:
Go with the Conservative Gut
How to Make Conservative Facts Up That Can Be Believed by Your Constituents
If You Say It Enough Times You Make It True
Guns Solve Everything
A Conservative UnEducation
The Crossroads of Voter Integrity Laws and Private Prisons
In my extremists often accuse their opponents of the very same underhand tactics they themselves use.
One example, in the UK, UKIP an extreme ne-nazi group campaigning for the UK to leave the European Union accuse opponents of 'fear mongering' when they themselves have spent years stoking up fear and hate against foreigners using posters such as the following.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-p...
"We did a thorough investigation, and we didn't find a liberal bias.""
That indeed would happen when you are so far left already ...
For the record, the media is slightly left on social issues and hard right on anything economic. Which makes sense when you pay attention to ego owns the media.
I understand why you think that, but you're wrong, it's not "right" on anything economic.
The stance of the "right" is for the market to work things out, that no government action is needed in support of either the corporation or the consumer, and that consumers have the advantage of numbers which protects them just fine if they use it. The stance of the "left" is that big brother needs to protect the consumer because they can't protect themselves.
The media moguls definitely are not in favor of laissez-faire, they want government-supported monopolies (fascism) to protect them against the rise of the independent media sources, bloggers and small outfits which the Internet made far more accessible than ever before.
The "left" likes to say that fascism is a principle of the "right", and points to evidence that "right-wing" politicians often support fascist policies (pro-business government involvement). But that's an invalid argument. Fact is, politicians of all stripes are far more fascist than the people they claim to represent. It's not hard to see evidence of this in "left-wing" groups as well, which is why some are erroneously claiming that Hillary is actually very right-wing. She's not, she's just fascist like all corrupt politicians.
Liberal bias is a problem only if conservative views are good for self and society.
Lean in a bit closer, Cheryl, and you might find it.
Arthur is an expected pick when liberals want to signal that they aren't really biased and look he actually agrees with us when it comes to the torch and pickfork flyovers.
It is the people who look to Facebook for valid news who should be trained. Why in the world could they possibly consider Facebook to be a news outlet for anything more significant than cat videos?
"Reality Has a liberal bias."
If I have to hear this old bromide, worn out and incorrect, one more time-- I'm going to make a fish ride a bicycle.
REALITY HAS NO BIAS.
CAPTCHA: Idiotic
If Cheryl Sandburg / Zuck really wanted an honest investigation of bias, they would have hired an outside firm to perform the investigation.
Since many conservative/GOP talking points are outright fabrications, I don't think that it's good for Facebook to promote them. If they suppress incorrect information, that would be more helpful than kissing the GOP's fat white ass.
Would this be like the "beating up sooties" training some police departments use? IOW, how not to get caught doing it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What does it matter if they do have a bias? They're a private company. In the same way that they're free to be unethical (just not outright illegal) about what data they collect and what they do with it, they're equally free to decide that they want to promote scalping baby seals for millionaires' sexual pleasure. The only motivation they have to pretend otherwise is whether they think they'll lose eyeballs/dollars incrementally in any given scenario. Frankly, I *liked* the idea that they were suppressing conservative bullshit. (Not that I matter to their bottom line; I've never had an account and never will.)
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Sheryl Sandberg...
Get these government database jews off Slashdot at least once a week OK? This didn't used to be a site that gave 2 shits about Facebook or Microsoft. Now they pay to have their stories
1) put on front page
2) teams go and debate bullshit in the first 20 or so posts trying to slant facts
The economy has worked a lot better under Clinton and Obama than it did under Reagan, Bush1, and Bush 2.
Their problem is that reality has a liberal bias:
The planet really is getting warmer. Trickle-down economics really doesn't work. Socailised, single-payer, single-risk-pool healthcare really is cheaper and more effective for the whole population, vaccination does prevent spread of infectious diseases, homosexuality is normal and harmless, and so on.
It is a fundamentally different way of thinking: Conservative, reactionary people think that you can decide how things are and will be. Progressive, liberal people think that you discover how things are by experience, by the scientific method, and by other means. So when things turn out not to be as the Conservative, reactionary people think they are, it must be a conspiracy and a bias against them - they can't be wrong, because in their world they can't be wrong, they decide how things are.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
No-one complains when companies are biased towards "greed is good", 'corporations have more rights', "too big to fail (corporate welfare)", 'money is free speech' policies. Instead it's called 'creating wealth'.
or even the Brexit. Or Uber and workers rights. Or Unions.
Fascism is the least of my worries. Government is a tool. A powerful one. It's going to get made and it's going to get used whether anyone likes it or not. The rich have _always_ used gov't. If we put our heads in the sand to hide from facism and try to create "Small" government all that will happen is our Small will be crushed by their large. This is just what happens. Spend a few hours on google or even just listening to the court jesters that pass for a left wing press (Stephen Colber, John Oliver, Samantha Bee) and you can prove it for yourself...
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Is the bias in the filtering or in the underlying nature of the stories being filtered?
For example, several polls suggest that the majority of American (85% in January Pew Research report) want expanded background checks for gun purchases. It is reasonable to think that media outlets, who sell clicks by saying what people already believe, would publish stories that reflect this popular bias.
What is unbiased filter? Is it that all views be represented equally? Perhaps it is that all views be represented in proportion to their audience. Is the "values center" (I can't think of a better term just now) clustered around the median of public opinion or the mean of public opinion? If you choose one as your gold standard of "unbiased" then you are inherently biased toward the other. You will make some people happy and others unhappy.
Gallup reported in October, 2015 that 58% of Americans say that marijuana should be legal in the US (several more recent polls show this percentage has increased since then). This is very different than in 1969 when it was just 12% of Americans who said it should be legal. What was once an extreme left wing view, has become a main stream view. Those against legalization were once main stream view but are increasingly becoming a minority view. A similar trend has occurred regarding background checks for gun ownership; according to one poll (http://www.pollingreport.com/guns.htm) 92% of Americans favor such checks. How then should Facebook filter stories about weed and gun control? Should it try to represent all views equally or should the filtering reflect the changing values of the public. If the American Enterprise Institute wants their views to be heard, should they look to Facebook to tilt the number and types of stories toward the conservative view in order for it be "balanced?"
Should stories confirming climate change science get equal billing with the debunkers?
Should minority views be represented in proportion to their frequency and audience? There are some crazy views out there that really don't deserve equal billing. Then there are some minority stories and opinions (such as this one) that get little attention, but absolutely everyone should read them. Time after time, the minority view (e.g. heliocentrism, theory of relativity, evolution, &etc) has turned out to be worth considering. That what I think, but perhaps I'm biased.
Nazis
Retards &
Assholes
As most normal people refer to them ..
Just FYI
And No, Those cocksuckers are not a civil rights group anymore than Charles Manson is to movie stars.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain