Facebook is taking very seriously charges made by former contractors that topics of interest to conservatives were routinely suppressed on the site’s trending topics feed, while stories about Black Lives Matter, though not as popular, were ‘injected’ into the feed to bump up their visibility.
Facebook has denied any bias, and today Vice President of Global Operations Justin Osofsky posted an overview of the guidelines that direct Facebook’s Trending Topics team and explained why #lunch never seems to trend.
BREAKING: Facebook explains why “lunch” is not a Trending Topic. https://t.co/0rJqOhj7SE pic.twitter.com/n5Eb1f7Xaa
— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) May 12, 2016
You made me nearly spit out my water. (not eating lunch or I'd said that)
— Jessica Denson (@Newsie2) May 12, 2016
There’s something ironic about Facebook confirming that its news stories are tied to “the real world.” To ensure that happens, Osofsky writes that Facebook’s news editors check each story against a list of 1,000 trusted news sources — and yes, popular news satire site The Onion is on the list, as is comedy site Cracked and unintentionally comic site The Daily Kos.
Motherboard, however, writes that the posted list wasn’t quite up to date, and that Buzzfeed has replaced Yahoo News in the current list of Facebook’s most trustworthy news sites.
https://twitter.com/jason_koebler/status/730866078696505345
https://twitter.com/Antonio9847/status/730873675000340481
obviously. they have a quiz to tell you what kind of pizza you are @benshapiro
— L'esprit d'escalier (@Noachl) May 12, 2016
Who doesn't trust "10 reasons why kittens are cute" news stories???? smh
— Cheesetrader (@cheesetrader1) May 12, 2016
Recommended
https://twitter.com/tauntButtered/status/730874140186447873
https://twitter.com/Agent_MScarn/status/730880986599297024
Which is least trusted amongst everyone else & proudly declares only one side to news stories. But no bias. https://t.co/9EHTMvq6SB
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) May 12, 2016
What’s that about there being only one side to news stories? Oh, that’s right — now we remember.
Why BuzzFeed went with a rainbow avatar: http://t.co/Wx9KfkXwId pic.twitter.com/W9nOQJCxse
— Michael Calderone (@mlcalderone) June 26, 2015
Whether Buzzfeed is totally liberally biased or only mostly liberally biased, would Mark Zuckerberg and staff even be able to tell the difference between that and straight news?
https://twitter.com/kimsey_n/status/730890038515359744
At least Facebook has apparently eased up on its alleged policy not to allow news stories about Facebook itself to trend.
https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/730874429811654656