![]() ![]() Facebook Cites Neutrality Guidelines In Initial StatementĪt 1pm pacific May 9th, Facebook said in a statement to TechCrunch that it was against the company’s curation policy to suppress or prioritize specific political views in its Trending topics, and that it has guidelines in place to preserve consistency and neutrality there. It’s possible that what was perceived as suppression may have been shortcomings of the algorithm or hesitation to display Trends based on news outlets not deemed to be credible. Stocky’s explanation suggests that Gizmodo’s sources may have exaggerated the claims.įacebook’s assertions here mesh with a report from the New York Times this evening that says a former employees of Facebook’s trend curation team told it that “Any ‘suppression,’…was based on perceived credibility - any articles judged by curators to be unreliable or poorly sourced, whether left-leaning or right-leaning, were avoided, though this was a personal judgment call.” We will also keep looking into any questions about Trending Topics to ensure that people are matched with the stories that are predicted to be the most interesting to them, and to be sure that our methods are as neutral and effective as possible.” Our review guidelines for Trending Topics are under constant review, and we will continue to look for improvements. Our guidelines do permit reviewers to take steps to make topics more coherent, such as combining related topics into a single event (such as # starwars and # maythefourthbewithyou), to deliver a more integrated experience. We do not insert stories artificially into trending topics, and do not instruct our reviewers to do so. We looked into that charge and found that it is untrue. There have been other anonymous allegations - for instance that we artificially forced # BlackLivesMatter to trend. At the same time, our reviewers’ actions are logged and reviewed, and violating our guidelines is a fireable offense. Facebook does not allow or advise our reviewers to systematically discriminate against sources of any ideological origin and we’ve designed our tools to make that technically not feasible. We have in place strict guidelines for our trending topic reviewers as they audit topics surfaced algorithmically: reviewers are required to accept topics that reflect real world events, and are instructed to disregard junk or duplicate topics, hoaxes, or subjects with insufficient sources. We are proud that, in 2015, the US election was the most talked-about subject on Facebook, and we want to encourage that robust political discussion from all sides. Popular topics are first surfaced by an algorithm, then audited by review team members to confirm that the topics are in fact trending news in the real world and not, for example, similar-sounding topics or misnomers. Trending Topics is designed to showcase the current conversation happening on Facebook. These guidelines do not prohibit any news outlet from appearing in Trending Topics. Nor do they permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over another. ![]() These guidelines do not permit the suppression of political perspectives. There are rigorous guidelines in place for the review team to ensure consistency and neutrality. We take these reports extremely seriously, and have found no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true.įacebook is a platform for people and perspectives from across the political spectrum. “My team is responsible for Trending Topics, and I want to address today’s reports alleging that Facebook contractors manipulated Trending Topics to suppress stories of interest to conservatives. But now Stocky’s statement bluntly calls into question the allegations by Gizmodo’s sources. ![]() At the same time, our reviewers’ actions are logged and reviewed, and violating our guidelines is a fireable offense.”įacebook’s earlier statement about having neutrality guidelines left it unclear whether any contractors hired to curate the trend had potentially violated those rules. “Facebook does not allow or advise our reviewers to systematically discriminate against sources of any ideological origin and we’ve designed our tools to make that technically not feasible. Facebook has “found no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true” wrote VP of search Tom Stocky on the social network tonight at 9:30pm pacific May 9th, regarding a Gizmodo report from sources who said they were formerly on the team that chose what Trends appeared on Facebook’s site. ![]()
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