Facebook Censoring Conservatives? Donald Trump Fans Should Be Outraged
Liberal Media = Liberal Tech?
According to ex-Facebook staffers, the social media’s “Trending News” section doesn’t always show what’s most popular. Instead, it is curated by people who routinely ignore conservative news!
These sources spoke to Gizmodo under the condition of anonymity, but their shocking revelation implies a wide-ranging plot to stifle conservative voices. (Source: “Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News,” Gizmodo, May 9, 2016.)
“Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending,” said a former curator. “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.” (Source: Ibid.)
That means that Facebook’s workers cherry-pick content based on their own political biases. On any normal web site, it wouldn’t make much of a difference, but Facebook’s “Trending News” section is a super-powered megaphone.
Think about it: at any given moment, 167 million people are looking at that little box on Facebook. It has enormous influence over people’s news consumption, yet Facebook workers have been loading it up with liberal content.
“It was absolutely bias [sic],” said a second unnamed ex-Facebook curator. “We were doing it subjectively. It just depends on who the curator is and what time of day it is. 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.” (Source: Ibid.)
According to these sources, popular conservative outlets like Breitbart, Newsmax, and The Washington Examiner were blacklisted unless curators could find a corresponding story on liberal rags like The New York Times.
These revelations are not all that shocking. Last month, it was revealed that Facebook employees appeared to take action to prevent a Donald Trump presidency. Some media outlets have even accused the social network for censoring and banning users for posting pro-Donald Trump messages. (Source: “Why There Is No Reason to Believe Facebook’s Promise Not to Influence Voters Against Trump,” Breitbart, May 10, 2016.)
In the same way we used to appreciate unbiased news reporting, the days of unbiased social networks seem to be coming to an end. Like the old media barons of the past, it seems inevitable that new media barons like Mark Zuckerberg will start to force their own politics on the outlets they own.
