Facebook curators suppress conservative news items

Hot Air.com ^ | May 9, 2016 | JOHN SEXTON

[firebrand]

Just saw this on Facebook. They do suppress conservative and religious posts, however.

[RayChuang88]

This is a VERY serious charge, to say the least.

And it could get much worse: if we find out that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ordered this "tweaking" of the News Feed on the behest of the White House, the Democratic National Committee and/or the Hillary Clinton campaign, then it officially becomes a Federal First Amendment case because it is using an instrument of communication to suppress political dissent, something prohibited specifically by the First Amendment.

If I were Jack Dorsey (the CEO of Twitter), Larry Page and Sergei Brin (the co-founders of Google), Satya Nadella (the CEO of Microsoft, who runs the Bing search engine), Sheryl Sandberg (the CEO of Yahoo!), and Evan Spiegel (the CEO of Snapchat), I would be VERY nervous because people are going to start asking questions on whether Conservative views were deliberately suppressed on social media and web search results. And especially if it was done in cahoots with powerful political people on the Left. And Tim Cook (Apple CEO) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO) will be asked whether voice command queries with Apple's Siri system or the Amazon Echo device have the same biases.

This is the type of scandal that could cause TREMENDOUS harm to the tech industry in very short order.

[nascarnation]

I’m not sure why it would.
Most of those folks are regime partisans and several are Obama bundlers.

Do you think Caliph Baraq will sic Loretta Lynch on them?

[usconservative]

I recommend a utility called Facebook Purity.

Second that!

If you have to use Fakebook, may as well make it behave the way YOU want it to!

[RayChuang88]

No, but once it gets fully exposed (especially if it becomes a front page Wall Street Journal story), people are going to start asking a LOT of hard questions at social media companies and web search providers on whether data algorithms were deliberately tweaked to suppress the political Right. It's the type of exposure that could cost a lot of managers at technology companies their jobs.

[nascarnation]

I hope you are correct, but those kind of revelations had ZERO impact when the IRS was doing the same thing.

[RayChuang88]

But this scandal with Facebook could have MUCH wider impact, because it now forces people to question the very impartiality of social media companies, any company involved with web searches, and the makers of devices that does voice-activated searches (Apple iPhone's Siri, Google Android's Google Now, and the Amazon Echo device). This could make the IRS scandal look like a minor event because it could destroy the so-called neutrality of the Internet.

[Elsie]

The ‘net IS neutral.

No one is FORCED to use the search engines they are provided.

[RayChuang88]

The ‘net IS neutral.

No one is FORCED to use the search engines they are provided.

True, but the services I mentioned--all extremely popular-- should by definition be politically neutral in the first place. The very fact former Facebook employees mentioned this bias on the News Feed tells me the entire tech industry is culpable--especially when you remember that picture taken some years ago of President Obama having dinner with CEO's of several important tech companies based in the Bay Area.

That's why I say within the next few days watch for a major breaking story in the Wall Street Journal talking about data bias on social media, web search results, voice command search results and even product search results on retail web sites. The fallout could be gigantic, to say the least.

[Elsie]

True, but the services I mentioned--all extremely popular-- should by definition be politically neutral in the first place.

Should be?

By whose rules?

Who has the POWER to enforce it?

---

A truly democratic 'social media' site would NOT have the 'power' to 'moderate' what was being typed upon it.

Do we REALLY want that?

Is it even POSSIBLE?

[Elsie]

Facebook is censoring me!!!!

Sorry, Steve, but on MY computer you are SELF censoring.

YOU are the one who has CHOSEN to place so many time wasting and useless ADs on your webpage; cluttering up what you are trying to get across.

FORCING me (ha ha) to twiddle my thumbs while waiting for the junk to finish before I can finally scroll down to see the rest of what you have produced.

Again; sorry; but I’ve got better ways to waste my time.

[JerseyDvl]

Same here, besides not wanting my life broadcast and archived on the internet I honestly don’t have the time for such nonsense.
I always saw it for what it was too: A hip and trendy way to get the lemmings to compile all the data the NSA needs without them having to lift a finger.