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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."
We did a thorough investigation, and we didn't find a liberal bias.
Biased group looks at self, finds no bias.
If they found no bias, why are they adding the training?
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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.
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in other other news the obama DOJ investigated itself and found no wrongdoing
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The bias doesn't disturb me. It's the intolerance of opposing views.
As I've always said, if you can't argue the opposing view on any contentious topic, you don't understand the topic and shouldn't hold a strong view. It's so damn easy to attribute the opposing view to malice or trolling, as it takes no effort.
This always pissed me off growing up, when some on the religious right would claim that gays were only have same-sex sex out of a desire to be evil, not a sincere desire for the same sex. Total lack of understanding. More recently I've seem the exact same ignorance in reverse, where people on the progressive left would claim that the only reason conservatives could oppose gay marriage was hatred of gays, and no other reason was sincere. Same total lack of understanding.
Intolerance of opposing views comes mostly from ignorance of the rationale for those views, which is simple intellectual laziness. The worst part is, people seem proud of this ignorance.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.