When will social media websites learn? Earlier this year, I wrote an article about Twitter’s new algorithm for finding content. It was a vastly unpopular idea, but the latest Facebook censorship controversy makes it looks good.
Censorship on Facebook is nothing new. Breitbart reported earlier this year about how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is one of many social media giants working with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in order to fight anti-refugee sentiment. This includes removing anti-refugee and anti-immigrant posts. Whether or not you agree with the sentiment of these posts, it is still censorship. Facebook is allowed to do as it pleases, but it is censorship.
Now, we see that there is a new censorship. Facebook is working to hide the works of a new evil: right wing news pundits.
How does this work? It’s very similar to the Twitter algorithm. The algorithm analyzes what news is receiving the most likes, views, and shares. Based on this, it sets up a “trending” list. The problem is that the people who run the algorithm are not robots. They are humans, which means that they have biases and prejudices.
Some of these human “curators” do not like the right wing. Some of them, like Facebook executive Tom Stocky, are big Hillary Clinton donors. So, what do they do? Well, according to a former Facebook curator, topics and personalities would be elevated or blacklisted based on whether they favored the left or the right. In an interview with Gizmodo, the former employee gave examples of topics and people who were downplayed: “former IRS official Lois Lerner, who was accused by Republicans of inappropriately scrutinizing conservative groups; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; popular conservative news aggregator the Drudge Report; Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL who was murdered in 2013; and former Fox News contributor Steven Crowder.” The report also talks about how they would handle news from conservative sites. “Every once in a while a Red State or conservative news source would have a story, but we would have to go and find the same story from a more neutral outlet that wasn’t as biased.”
There has been a large outcry. Everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Mr. Crowder has responded to the controversy. As of today, Facebook has reached out to top conservatives to meet and talk this out. This is clearly blowing up.
Again, Facebook can do as they please. It is their website, so they can set up what’s trending. That being said, there are two big problems. First, 63 percent of all Facebook and Twitter users say that they get their news from social media, according to a poll. This is bad because if people are getting filtered news, they may not be getting the truth. Secondly, people get paid based off of views from Facebook. If Facebook censors certain people, they are damaging these people financially. What will Facebook do to fight back and deal with this crisis? We will see.
