Facebook Addresses Criticism That Its Trends Are Too Liberal by Linking to Red State

Lindsey EllefsonMay 9th, 2016, 5:12 pm
 

So, the big news this morning was that Facebook’s “news curators” had instructions to suppress trending news that reflected a rightward lean in favor of presenting news stories that were more progressive.

To refresh, this was said by one of the former curators in the original article:

“Every once in awhile 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.”

This was noted by the reporter, Michael Nunez:

The former curators, all of whom worked as contractors, also said they were directed not to include news about Facebook itself in the trending module.

Now, look at this:

Facebook is not only breaking one of its cardinal rules by allowing itself to trend, but is linking users directly to the website a former curator specifically mentioned was a no-no.

The question now is whether this Facebook’s way of passive-aggressively saying, “You want conservative content? You got your stinkin’ conservative content!” Conversely, could it be that Facebook is trying to pretend like the suppression thing never happened by creating a link as if to say, “We don’t know what you’re talking about. We are linking to Red State right here!“?

What do you think Facebook is up to here?

[image via screengrab]

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