Amongst the two political parties that have a face off in every election in the United States, the conservative party is the one which supports all the policies and practices which encourage life. This party also represents a majority of the people in the United States. The arguments of conservatives and liberals aside, we can all agree that every person regardless of the views that he/she entertains deserves an opportunity of being heard when he/she speaks. This is one opportunity which the conservatives claim they have been denied by the most trending website Facebook.
The matter came out in the open when a few of the former employees of the company admitted to leaving out the popular news stories concerning the conservatives. Following those statements from the former employees, Gizmodo made the story official and released a report on the issue which confirmed that the views and the major announcements from the conservatives were not being published in Facebook’s newsfeed.
In this particular report, Gizmodo also gave an exclusive on the revelations made by a few of the Facebook news curators who admitted that they had been instructed to inject stories into the popular section of the facebook news even though these stories were not popular enough to warrant any such inclusion. The purpose of the exercise was to find ways to exclude the new stories related to the conservatives.
There was, of course, an answer that Facebook gave to the allegations which were being directed at the company. The unfortunate part of the news is that the reaction was not one which reflected well on actions of a company which shoulders the burden of being the most popular source of the news amongst the users. Facebook came out to deny the report which made such allegations. After explaining the process which was being employed by the company’s workers in selecting the news to be reported, the people in charge said that there was no evidence found within that process which might point to the authenticity of the allegation.
The Company denying these allegations seems unreasonable considering that they had in fact in the year 2014 admitted to changing the new feed to suit the requirements and the emotional needs of the user in a better way. Facebook’s track record says that the company is capable of making this move it has been accused of. The history of the company is enough to convince us of the fact that the most facebook’s very popular newsfeed does not give the users news which could pass the requirements of transparency.
Let’s for a second assume that the company did not find any evidence to support the claim that the employees are leaving out this conservative news, the only reasonable conclusion to draw here would be that the algorithm which has been coded to pick out the news which is most popular is no less biased than the humans are who run that algorithm. We can never know; maybe the same algorithm was taught to choose from this one party.
Seeing how much the facebook news is relied upon for news topics which are trending, the company should not be indulging in any political strategies and the users should be given the respect to make a choice on the basis of all of the information that is out there. Since the company has proved that it does not respect the user’s freedom, having the authorities like the Federal Communications Commission intervene may be an idea which can put Facebook back on track. The least we can do is try.
Works Cited
Fox News Insider. 'A Massive Story': Facebook Accused of Blocking Conservative News. 10 May 2016. <http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/05/10/facebook-censorship-workers-say-conservative-news-stories-blocked>.
Seetharman, Deepa. Facebook Rebuts Criticisms About a Bias Against Conservatives. 10 May 2016. <http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-refutes-criticisms-about-a-bias-against-conservatives-1462890206>.
