Facebook Bias: Social Networking Site Suppresses Conservative News
Social networking giant Facebook is currently embroiled in a media scandal after an online media outfit cited an anonymous former news curator's allegation that the company is systematically burying down conservative-oriented news items off the social media platform's trending news section. Because of the alleged machinations, critics have accused Facebook of political bias for suppressing conservative content.
The news erupted after Gizmodo's Monday report claimed that a journalist who previously worked for Facebook stated that workers deliberate censor news laden with conservative-leaning content on its trending section that appears on the right-hand side of its page.
As per CNBC report, the following is a summary of the claims by Gizmodo citing a purported insider source.
* Facebook 'news curators' choose which articles should appear in the trending section while deliberately blocking conservative-focused content from surfacing.
* Stories coming from conservative news outlets like Breitbart and Newsmax are filtered unless other mainstream sites cover the same stories.
* Managers reportedly instruct curators to insert into trending news feed stories that reflect the management's views.
Because of the media firestorm that the scandal created, the US Senate Commerce Committee has sent a letter addressed to Mark Zuckerberg requesting Facebook to answer the allegations leveled against the social media giant.
Meanwhile, SocialFlow CEO whose social media outfit has deep business links with Facebook finds the Gizmodo claims 'doubtful' because his company could actually tell whether the social networking giant is indeed suppressing conservative-inclined political content. The company provides an enterprise media tool service for scheduling and optimizing posts to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and GooglePlus.
"We've seen no evidence of any sort of intentional manipulation of what content is seen," SocialFlow CEO Jim Anderson said as quoted by Yahoo News. "What I have seen is people's engagement rate can go down, but that might be because they haven't published as much lately, or frankly if their content wasn't as good."
