
Facebook suppressed right wing stories - chris_wot
http://finance.ninemsn.com.au/careers/careersnews/9117323/facebook-suppressed-right-wing-news-stories
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11659565](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11659565)

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chris_wot
Thank you :-) sorry about that, I posted because my friend John Dickson was
mentioned, and then realised I hadn't read carefully enough and the better
link is the Gizmodo article, which wasn't linked to...

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ManlyBread
How come that the bigger the service becomes the more prone it is to
manipulations like that? It's always the same story: the service is relatively
new, it becomes big, then it starts introducing algorithms that mess with the
natural order of the submissions (time added, votes etc.) and then it comes to
light that someone was manipulating this system in order to push their agenda.
The same applies to reddit and (I think?) twitter.

~~~
nailer
> (I think?) twitter

Twitter definitely: they removed Milo Yiannopolis' identity verification tick
without citing a specific reason. You might not like what he has to say (I
frequently don't) but there have been much worse things Twitter doesn't seem
to care about at all (someone threatening to murder Donald Trump). I don't
want Twitter or any other media to become an echo chamber.

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dantillberg
Regardless of whether _this_ story is true or not, how do we know whether
and/or to what extent new media backhandedly affects political outcomes?

Facebook (if/when it wants to) could wield tremendous power in swaying
politics throughout the world by adjusting which stories/posts people see and
which they tend not to. How are people to know that they're not being
intentionally manipulated?

(and if that seems like Conspiracy Theory talk, perhaps first consider that
Old Media -- TV, newspapers, radio, etc -- throughout the world very often do
exactly this.)

~~~
meira
Brazil is the biggest facebook lab. It's happening right now.

~~~
meira
And it's ugly.

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f_allwein
Good example of what happens as the (formerly open) Internet becomes closed. I
guess many people already equate "Facebook" to "the Internet", unaware of the
processes running there. What if a future president bans left wing stories/
stories about Islam etc?

Sadly, it looks like we will continue to move away from the open Internet.

"In the near future - _corporate_ networks reach out to the stars." (Ghost in
the Shell)

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yAnonymous
Very much related:

I noticed that an increasing amount of people apparently automatically "like"
left- and rightwing Facebook pages, depending on other pages they follow and
news they like.

This could possibly have legal consequences for the users and I'm looking for
a way to legally pursue Facebook's auto-liking bullshit. They knowingly
misrepresent people to increase their profits.

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MatekCopatek
_" It was absolutely bias, we were doing it subjectively,"_

I think it would be equally interesting to discuss the biases of algorithmic
solutions. It's a bit naive to think people selecting news is subjective while
a computer selecting news (based on an algorithm written by people that relies
on data created by measuring people) is somehow objective.

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tomp
Facebook has already denied this.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/10/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/10/facebook-
denies-censoring-conservative-trending-news)

Although I don't see any signal in this, it seems like the obvious course of
action both if they are and if they aren't supressing conservative articles.

~~~
awqrre
Facebook was also denying that it was trying to influence election results, a
few weeks ago: [http://thehill.com/policy/technology/276503-facebook-
employe...](http://thehill.com/policy/technology/276503-facebook-employee-
said-to-pose-question-about-stopping-trump-to-ceo) ...

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gormann2
I would bet my left ball that the republicans employ astroturfing businesses
to spam the social networks with their stories and form a narrative.

They get people to control multiple personas on the same computer and post the
same story from the point of view of those personas.

If a person encounters the same story a couple of times, they tend to believe
it.

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1337biz
Very loaded wording. Since when became "conservative" a synonym for "right
wing".

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cabalamat
Probably since 1834, when the Conservative Party was founded.

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meira
Here in Brazil their "algorithms" do the opposite: suppress left-wing news.
And that is, my friends, why you all are seeing the mess happening in my
country.

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manicdee
… based on one statement by one person.

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chris_wot
I probably should have linked to this story:

[http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-
supp...](http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-
conser-1775461006)

But not just one person - Facebook had to apologise to John Dickson for
deleting his post. So I ask you - what were they doing fooling around with his
posts?

~~~
jasonlotito
Read the story you linked to. Still only one person.

"This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC
gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul..."

You're confusing the multiple people who claimed they were asked to inject
stories that weren't trending.

In fact, you have multiple sources who contradict the opinion of your source:
"Other former curators interviewed by Gizmodo denied consciously suppressing
conservative news, and we were unable to determine if left-wing news topics or
sources were similarly suppressed."

Finally, underlying contention, that Facebook was at fault, is even denied by
that same individual.

"there is no evidence that Facebook management mandated or was even aware of
any political bias at work."

And finally, this is Gizmodo, so unless you have something from a trustworthy
source, I would treat them as suspect at best.

~~~
chris_wot
Curious, then, that John Dicksons post was specifically removed. Why was
someone reviewing it at all? Sure, they accidentally deleted it - they
admitted as much when they officially apologised to John. But then again, why
was a staffer looking at Dicksons post at all?

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meira
Here in Brazil their "algorithms" do the opposite: suppress left-wing news.
And that is, my friends, why you all are seeing the mess happening in my
country.

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jlangenauer
What's this? Conservatives complaining that a business wants to pick and
choose who it does business with? I thought they were in favour of that.

