Thanks to an explosive investigation by Gizmodo, Facebook employees admit that they were purposely hiding conservative stories that were trending on the social media site, and boosting those of liberals.
From Gizmodo:
“Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending,” said the former curator. This individual asked to remain anonymous, citing fear of retribution from the company. The former curator is politically conservative, one of a very small handful of curators with such views on the trending team. “I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz.”
The former curator was so troubled by the omissions that they kept a running log of them at the time; this individual provided the notes to Gizmodo. Among the deep-sixed or suppressed topics on the list: 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. “I believe it had a chilling effect on conservative news,” the former curator said.
Even our buddy Crowder?!?! What a bunch of jerks!!!
Here’s a video report about it:
And not only did they prevent conservative voices from trending, but they boosted liberal stories too:
That same curator said the Black Lives Matter movement was also injected into Facebook’s trending news module. “Facebook got a lot of pressure about not having a trending topic for Black Lives Matter,” the individual said. “They realized it was a problem, and they boosted it in the ordering. They gave it preference over other topics. When we injected it, everyone started saying, ‘Yeah, now I’m seeing it as number one’.” This particular injection is especially noteworthy because the #BlackLivesMatter movement originated on Facebook, and the ensuing media coverage of the movement often noted its powerful social media presence.
Now, it’s important to note that there’s no evidence that Facebook itself ordered this to happen – what the curators allege is that liberal employees were allowed to edit trends according to their political biases. But the point is that it happened. And realize that for these websites, trending helps ad revenue – Facebook would have been lining the pockets of liberals while suppressing revenue for conservatives.
Here’s how Facebook responded to the allegations:
“We take allegations of bias very seriously. Facebook is a platform for people and perspectives from across the political spectrum. Trending Topics shows you the popular topics and hashtags that are being talked about on Facebook. There are rigorous guidelines in place for the review team to ensure consistency and neutrality. These guidelines do not permit the suppression of political perspectives. Nor do they permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over another. These guidelines do not prohibit any news outlet from appearing in Trending Topics.”
And that’s why we really depend on YOU to share our stories and help get the conservative point of view out. We KNOW that we face an uphill battle with the far-left gatekeepers trying to shut down our opinions.
We really sincerely appreciate what our readers do to help us spread the word… hint hint!