Facebook Changes Trending Topics Amid Accusations Of Bias Against Conservatives

[Vanyali]

Nope, I want to hear everything they are saying. Why would I be afraid of their arguments?

wait, did he just mistake you for a liberal?

[Rooflesstoofless]

Weird. I had to unfollow a bunch of groups and manually change my ad preferences recently because all I was getting in my feed and the trending topics were conservative stuff. Trump, guns, god, etc...

[zenkai]

I prefer to think of it as every day something works good it is a win.

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Nope, I want to hear everything they are saying. Why would I be afraid of their arguments?

Why are you saying FB is simply appeasing a group with a story about FB employees suppress said group? You act as if conservatives just started bitching out of the blue when this is not the case

[PC2]

Why are you saying FB is simply appeasing a group with a story about FB employees suppress said group? You act as if conservatives just started bitching out of the blue when this is not the case

What? They just confirmed that their process and stance is neutral. There isn't much else to the story.

Weird. I had to unfollow a bunch of groups and manually change my ad preferences recently because all I was getting in my feed and the trending topics were conservative stuff. Trump, guns, god, etc...

What's wrong with a gun ad or topic?

[zenkai]

What? They just confirmed that their process and stance is neutral. There isn't much else to the story.




What's wrong with a gun ad?

Lets see, FB workers come out saying they suppress conservative news.

Conservatives get pissed off, conservatives who have been complaining about being suppressed finally get noticed

FB investigates itself, says no wrong doing

FB changes things to make sure it wont happen

Yeah ...

[Kraenen]

What's wrong with a gun ad or topic?

I don't particularly enjoy being reminded of violence on a facebook feed.

[PC2]

I don't particularly enjoy being reminded of violence on a facebook feed.

The vast majority of guns are never involved in violence. As far as a hobby I guess that could be a problem, where you add someone who then changes their hobbies more to something you're not interested in.

[Rothg]

Sure, both sides can be equally biased, but that's not typically the case. Typically, it leans more in one direction, or the other. A reasonable person looks to the evidence, and comes to their own conclusion, they don't try and find some artificial middle between those speaking the loudest.

I see where you're coming from, and actually agree with you. Just because there are two sides, and there is truth to both sides, doesn't mean each side has equal amounts of truth.

However, how is a person supposed to make an educated decision if they're only presented with one side? Or half of the evidence? They can't. If you're confident that you, and your side, are correct, then why not allow people to make arguments against you and have their voices heard?

[Narwal]

Perhaps, but even if bias was found, they still wouldn't have done anything illegal. This is an internal investigation of their own policies. There is literally no need for 3rd party.

You're right there. I'm not saying they should be investigated by a third party, hell I'm not saying they should have investigated themselves even. If they want to be left leaning and use moderators to try and help shape society by pushing left leaning stories above right ones (and that's basically the allegation here), that's all their prerogative.

In the end facebook caved to what every other business does, the bottom line. Would the executives of Facebook like to move society to mirror their own personal beliefs? Sure... Do they want everyone not of their personal beliefs to boycott and leave their product? No.

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I see where you're coming from, and actually agree with you. Just because there are two sides, and there is truth to both sides, doesn't mean each side has equal amounts of truth.

However, how is a person supposed to make an educated decision if they're only presented with one side? Or half of the evidence? They can't. If you're confident that you, and your side, are correct, then why not allow people to make arguments against you and have their voices heard?

Bingo

/10chars

[PC2]

I see where you're coming from, and actually agree with you. Just because there are two sides, and there is truth to both sides, doesn't mean each side has equal amounts of truth.

Right, yet in Western society there are no majority contested political decisions where the truth is Boolean. Most people understand you need a spectrum, such as a mixed economy and a Roe vs Wade like policy.

[Pangean]

Seems strange to see support for a fairness doctrine in this thread.

Yup they will be going after Talk radio stations that only have right wing content any day now....

[Sky High]

joy, another reason to never get on that shitty website.

[PC2]

Yup they will be going after Talk radio stations that only have right wing content any day now....

A talk radio station that doesn't have a political mission statement ought to be politically neutral, so that would be good. Though there is nothing wrong with having a specific theme or target audience.

[nextormento]

Congratulations, you've won exactly what you already had.
Applauding this as a "victory" is pretty darned silly.
to prevent future fraudulent claims of bias

Not quite.

First, the claim of bias is not fraudulent by any standard. Not yet anyway. They're free to pursue that angle and take it to court, though.

Independently of what findings -or lack thereof- were reported (and this is them auditing themselves to avoid any subsequent subpoena), the move towards transparency is a move to ensure neutrality. Or, at least, to provide the means to track said neutrality.
They are not neutral. No source can be. They're -reportedly- giving users a way to check how neutral they are.

That's as far as the abstract goes.
The implementation is not much, really. So it's understandable that people would want to pass this event as "nothing happened, move along". But something did happen: they are acknowledging a consumer concern, and acting on it.
The reading is: they're both protecting themselves from suspicion (as you'd analyze it), and acknowledging their previous implementation to be insufficient for consumers.

Some folks may not be adequately expressive to convey what piece is to be applauded. But it is a victory nonetheless. Just not a victory for the camp you were conjuring to fight, but for consumers and advertisers on the site, as well as users concerned with how they strive for neutrality.

[hrugner]

While I never noticed this since "things related to this story" still shows a bunch of conservative sites, glad to see they're making steps to be more transparent and getting rid of that top 10 list.

However, I dont think a story should be published just because its conservative to balance out the previous bias (if any). 'Obama is a Kenyan muslim' or 'Newton didnt happen' still needs to be not shown because of its conspiracy theory nonsense.

After making an effort to hunt down what people on the other side of topics actually say, rather than what my side says they are saying, I can promise you that hearing the opposite side is worth while even when it is desperately stupid. Hell, hearing exactly what some of my conservative friends disagreed with regarding climate change evidence helped me find the pieces they were missing so they could understand where the concern is coming from. All they hear is a bleeding heart take on things, so I gave them the engineers version so they could check the facts and run the numbers. I may not have converted anyone, but they can spot articles that are deliberately misleading now.

Heck, try to think of why those militia people staged a protest up in Oregon. Odds are you only ever read articles shaming and mocking them, and nothing about their actual concerns.

[Crissi]

After making an effort to hunt down what people on the other side of topics actually say, rather than what my side says they are saying, I can promise you that hearing the opposite side is worth while even when it is desperately stupid. Hell, hearing exactly what some of my conservative friends disagreed with regarding climate change evidence helped me find the pieces they were missing so they could understand where the concern is coming from. All they hear is a bleeding heart take on things, so I gave them the engineers version so they could check the facts and run the numbers. I may not have converted anyone, but they can spot articles that are deliberately misleading now.

Heck, try to think of why those militia people staged a protest up in Oregon. Odds are you only ever read articles shaming and mocking them, and nothing about their actual concerns.

I have no issues with hearing the other side. Im pretty centrist, so thats kind of what I do on a daily basis anyways. However, blatantly provable wrong things shouldnt be given air time. That is very different from people who just have a different view of things where opinions on either side are subjective.

[hrugner]

I have no issues with hearing the other side. Im pretty centrist, so thats kind of what I do on a daily basis anyways. However, blatantly provable wrong things shouldnt be given air time. That is very different from people who just have a different view of things where opinions on either side are subjective.

That's sort of it though. Things that are blatantly provably wrong shouldn't be criticized privately, but openly. When you block the interaction of ideologies, you end up with people who never see the criticisms and people who can speak without fear of answering to criticism. Similarly, by obfuscating the source of these false ideas, you remove impetus for change and put the burden of bearing these false ideas on those who consume and relay them rather than those who create them.

[Rooflesstoofless]

What's wrong with a gun ad or topic?

Nothing at all, imho....just that I was getting so many ads I was missing posts from actual humans/friends.

[CMartel]

There'd be observable bias in their selections.

Facebook's investigation failed to find any such bias. Meaning they were already pretty balanced. The entire thing was a persecution complex.

The investigation of Gulf War Syndrome found that the soldiers that went to the Gulf are healthier than those that didn't, they had to count women's normal pre natal visits the same as a guy who went to the ER the same as a guy going to the ER 20 times in 9 months to do it. Do you not remember locking the thread of Zuckborg working with the jewish lesbian former Stasi member Annetta Kahane to ban videos of migrant crimes against indigenous europeans?

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wait, did he just mistake you for a liberal?

He believes in open borders, that the US constitution (a nation he doesn't belong to) doesn't mean what it says, that 18th century colonial Englishmen conceived a governmental framework in a manner to ensure their posterity would be obliged to subsidize the incursions of parasitic Mayan squatters.and that evolution stopped at the neck in humans.

If he is not a leftist than he is the biggest (https://www.amazon.com/Cuckservative-How-Conservatives-Betrayed-America-ebook/dp/B018ZHHA52 ) there is.

[Deleted]

The point, which you're so aggressively avoiding, is that on some issues, there is a "right" side. Taking the middle ground between that and the opposition isn't "neutral", it's deliberately wrong.



Well, that speaks to the silliness of claiming that there are firm "sides" on all these issues, divided only along political grounds, which is a completely separate silliness.

I mean in cases of, say, teaching evolution in schools. That's the "right" side. Teaching creationism is the "other side". Providing a balanced discussion of both is not a "neutral" position, it gives unwarranted weight to an objectively religious perspective, one which has no place in public schooling in the first place.

Creationism should absolutely be discussed in school, the right way to keep people from subscribing to nutjob theories is not to try and shelter them from them but to bring thme into light and thoroughly dissect them.

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The point, which you keep ignoring, is that you always had neutrality. You didn't "win" anything through all this. All that was demonstrated was the existence of a persecution complex, held by those who leveled the accusation in the first place.

If nothing changed then why are you arguing against it? There was certainly potential for abuse and bias, now that potential has been severely curtailed. That should be good for everyone, no?

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I see where you're coming from, and actually agree with you. Just because there are two sides, and there is truth to both sides, doesn't mean each side has equal amounts of truth.

However, how is a person supposed to make an educated decision if they're only presented with one side? Or half of the evidence? They can't. If you're confident that you, and your side, are correct, then why not allow people to make arguments against you and have their voices heard?

Because he's a fascist I guess?