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Facebook Disputes Gizmodo Report, Says It Never Built and Withheld Any News Feed Changes Based on Their Political Impact (slate.com)

Posted by msmash on from the someone's-lying dept.

Tech news site Gizmodo reported Monday that Facebook planned a News Feed update that would have identified fake or hoax news stories, but "disproportionately impacted right-wing news sites by downgrading or removing that content from people's feeds" so it chose to never release the update. Facebook has denied the claims in the report. A spokesperson told Slate: "The article's allegation is not true. We did not build and withhold any News Feed changes based on their potential impact on any one political party. We always work to make News Feed more meaningful and informative, and that includes examining the quality and accuracy of items shared, such as clickbait, spam, and hoaxes. Mark himself said, "I want to do everything I can to make sure our teams uphold the integrity of our products." This includes continuously review updates (sic) to make sure we are not exhibiting unconscious bias.

12 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. And so does by s.petry · · Score: 2, Insightful

    CNN, ABC, MSNBC, Huffpo, and every other media outlet in the country. Lie and Deny has worked pretty well against the masses for a long time. People do eventually catch on though. Hence, just before the election 76% of people said that the US was going the wrong way, media has a 6% trustworthy rating (probably lower now). The first stat was a dead giveaway that Hillary did not have a 99.8% chance of winning as polsters proclaimed on those same media outlets.

    In fairness, there is certainly some bias in the little tiny bit of Right leaning media (Kelly and O'Reilly are left of center but for the sake of argument lets call them "fair"). It's so little though, very few people noticed.

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    1. Re:And so does by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In what bizarre alternate reality is Bill O'Reilly left of center?

    2. Re:And so does by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 5, Funny

      In what bizarre alternate reality is Bill O'Reilly left of center?

      Alt-right!

    3. Re:And so does by sg_oneill · · Score: 2

      The first stat was a dead giveaway that Hillary did not have a 99.8% chance of winning as polsters proclaimed on those same media outlets.

      Actually it was between 60 to 80 percent depending on the time out from the vote, with it hovering near 60 towards the end. So a 2 in 3 chance. Well the dice rolled and it was 1. But hey, have a bark and ignore the underlying math if it makes you feel better, I guess.

      Kellly and O'Reilly are left of center but for the sake of argument lets call them "fair"

      Well thats one of the stranger opinions I've read this week.

      --
      Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
    4. Re:And so does by nine-times · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Do you mean things like wanting to secure the border and vet immigrants makes you racist and xenophobic? Deporting criminals is racist? Saying that the inner cities are hell and education is broken makes you racist?

      Well those things seem like opinions all around. Probably not much worth arguing about, since logic can't get you out of what it didn't get you into. If you're getting this upset about someone else not being that upset about immigrants, then... yeah, you're probably xenophobic. Especially if that "someone else" is Bill O'Reilly. I don't know you, though. And your above statements are so vague that no sensible person would agree or dispute it without inferring a lot about your assumptions.

      We do secure our borders and vet immigrants. We could devote more resources to those things, but we could also devote less. Nobody is suggesting we completely open borders. Nobody seriously thinks we're going to completely secure them. Or... nobody serious thinks that? Similar with deporting criminals. Everyone is in favor of that, but the disagreement is over how many resources we should devote to deporting which criminals.

      Saying inner cities are hell just shows that you don't know what you're talking about. It's not racist, exactly, unless the reason you think they're hell is because you think black people live there. These days, white people love cities because many of them are pretty awesome. The more "inner" the city, the better, usually. Minorities have a tendency to get pushed into the outer city. And they're not necessarily hell. They're just poorer than the rich areas. I'm a white guy who lived in a black neighborhood for a couple years. It kinda sucked because there weren't any banks or good grocery stores, but the people were friendly.

      Education is broken? Sure, some of it is somewhat broken, at least. It's not really working. I don't think anyone is happy with it. I'm not sure what you mean to imply by bringing that up. Did someone say you were racist because you thought education needed improvement? Or did you imply that the solution was to get rid of the minorities in the school?

      So what's your point? Is it just to be angry at people and show that you have a very limited binary perspective?

  2. Not too surprising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    People that rely on fakebook for their news get exactly what they deserve. Same with people that rely on any single source for their news. Always ask yourself:

    1. Is this news or gossip? (Exactly what am I being told?)
    2. Why am I being told this?
    3. Who is telling me this?

    The answers will help you decide the truthiness of the stories.

  3. A/B Testing by darkain · · Score: 3, Informative

    BULLSHIT Facebook. My account was shoved into the A/B testing for this several months ago. Articles from known satirical web sites would be flagged as such, and this was such a praised feature at the time, too. We all got sick and fucking tired having to constantly link to Snopes or other resources to "prove" that a particular site was a satire site. The only real issue is that this system was primarily limited to just domains as a whole, so bullshit clickbaitery web sites that have marginal content once in a blue moon wouldn't be listed (Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, and similar)

  4. Lying with truth by The-Ixian · · Score: 3

    We did not build and withhold any News Feed changes based on their potential impact on any one political party

    What I see here is the use of "any one political party" which could mean that they didn't implement it because it was decided that it would impact all political parties or that it wasn't implemented because it would affect users (not political parties).

    I just don't trust any PR statement.... they are bound to be carefully crafted to be "true" without actually being so.

    --
    My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
  5. They flag everyones political leaning by BrookHarty · · Score: 2

    They do a fair bit of herding people and hiding content. First they determine a persons political status, then they only show you stories based on your favorites, while avoiding triggering stories. They limit/censor what posts show up in your feeds. They have multiple lawsuits on leaving hate groups that they agree with, anti-Israel, gun groups, conservative media. Its not even a guess, its already been verified by multiple media outlets.

    Everyone knows they jumped the shark, as a discussion medium it sucks.

  6. Re:One YUUUGE reason Trump won by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Thiel was no longer gay simply because who he voted for. A mother of a 7 year old kicked him out of the house for voting in a mock election for Trump.

    Dude did you just sleep thjrough the entire year ? Really? That's all you got? One bad parent? Meanwhile Trump is the dude who is a proven sexual predator, racist hate monger and being sued for running a scam (as the judge said) university. Yeah, but both sides are basically the same. uh huh. Yeah...

    The Left have become extremist whackos doing anything they can for power including violence, bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, and every other thing they accuse others of doing.

    Like what?

  7. Re:One YUUUGE reason Trump won by bryanbrunton · · Score: 2

    Except some people really are racist and homo-phobes. Like Steve Bannon, Trump's advisor. That dude is white supremacist fck head.

  8. Re:The Liberal Search for Scapegoats Continues! by bryanbrunton · · Score: 2

    The media reported the facts. Trump said a lot of sexist, xenophobic, racist nonsense. And the media reported it.