UPDATE 05/23/16:
Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch released a statement today saying an investigation did not yield any evidence that conservative stories had been suppressed.
"Our investigation has revealed no evidence of systematic political bias in the selection or prominence of stories included in the Trending Topics feature," the statement reads. However, Stretch details the changes that are being made to the Trending Topics feature in hopes of improving it following the investigation. The statement reads:
UPDATED 10:00 p.m. ET: Mark Zuckerberg released a statement saying that he had seen no evidence Facebook had suppressed conservative news in its trending topics, but vowed to launch a full investigation to make sure. He also said he would be inviting political voices to discuss the issue with Facebook. You can read his statement in full below.
UPDATED 4:07 p.m. ET: Internal documents obtained by the Guardian appear to contrast Facebook's initial claims of not artificially inserting stories into trending topics. The leaked documents show that the company reportedly "relies heavily" on a small editorial team's interventions, with such interventions taking place at "almost every stage" of the trending news operation.
Facebook published a blog entitled "Information About Trending Topics" Thursday, outlining their process in light of recent controversy. "The Trending Topics team is governed by a set of guidelines meant to ensure a high-quality product, consistent with Facebook's deep commitment to being a platform for people of all viewpoints," Justin Osofsky, Facebook's VP of Global Operations, wrote. "Our goal has always been to deliver a valuable experience for the people who use our service." Read the full blog post here.
See original story from 05/10/16 below.
Former Facebook employees claim that the social network's "trending news" section was curated to suppress news that would appeal to conservative voters.
According to Gizmodo, a former Facebook "news curator," who said they were politically conservative, stated,
Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending. 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.
Gizmodo also reported that other former curators denied knowledge of an intentionally liberal bias in the trending news feed, but that they were explicitly instructed to place non-trending news in the feed, if management felt it was important. According to one anonymous former curator,
We were told that if we saw something, a news story that was on the front page of these ten sites, like CNN, the New York Times, and BBC, then we could inject the topic. If it looked like it had enough news sites covering the story, we could inject it, even if it wasn’t naturally trending.
Examples of news stories that were put into the news feed despite not having trending status were reports about the Charlie Hebdo attacks and certain Black Lives Matter stories, according to the information provided to Gizmodo. Regardless of whether or not Facebook's news feed has a bias against conservative stories, it would appear from the statements of former employees that the feed is most definitely not restricted to what is trending.
Reached for comment by Complex, a Facebook spokesperson provided the following statement:
We take allegations of bias very seriously. Facebook is a platform for people and perspectives from across the political spectrum.
Trending Topics shows you the popular topics and hashtags that are being talked about on Facebook.
There are rigorous guidelines in place for the review team to ensure consistency and neutrality. These guidelines do not permit the suppression of political perspectives. Nor do they permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over another. These guidelines do not prohibit any news outlet from appearing in Trending Topics.
We will update as more information becomes available.
