A former Facebook employee is saying the company required its employees to selectively insert news stories into its “trending” column, according to a Monday Gizmodo story. He also reports that the company allowed its employees to routinely keep stories that came from conservative news sources out of the trending column.
Facebook has denied all allegations of specifically suppressing stories from conservative publications, but has affirmed that it actively curates its trending news stories.
Since it chooses which stories are trending, Facebook cannot be a neutral news service, but rather has been playing the part of as an active newsroom with a vested interest in which stories reach the public. With over a billion monthly users, Facebook wields a massive amount of power and the ability to mold and shape the way its users view certain stories.
While many publications have cried out against Facebook for curating its trending news, there are many practical reasons for doing so. For example, sometimes stories that do well on Twitter do not gain traction with the public as quickly on Facebook, so curators insert them into the top trending category to get conversation going and give the social network a more “up-to-the-minute” feeling. The former employee who broke the story also noted that since he left Facebook, the company has updated its algorithm so that employees do not to be so actively involved in running the site’s Newsfeed anymore.
The backlash against Facebook, while expressing justified fears over the company’s skewed reporting, ended with a twist of irony. Just hours after this story broke yesterday, it became Facebook’s top trending story.
Original story at Gizmodo.