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Since when is Facebook a news outlet?

 LordofHats wrote:
Since when is Facebook a news outlet?

It's not. I was responding to this quote:

 d-usa wrote:
We are fine with actual news sources, like CNN/Fox/MSNBC/HuffPo/TheBlaze/WaPo/etc, curating their news based on their ideology.

It's a pretty short thread, dude.

Then it's a wonder you didn't quote that post and instead quoted this post;

 d-usa wrote:
Do you have a chip on your shoulder?

Considering that they also didn't run a story with "actual news sources curate their stories to suite ideology", even Gizmodo is fine with it.

So yes, we are fine with it. Because we haven't done gak about it.

Maybe go back to ignoring me?

My only problem with this is that I subscribe to a few conservative sites that regularly post on facebook. Most of them are military related but I do have Steven Crowder on there as well so I don't like missing articles and such because FB wants to censor those sites.

But beyond that, they haven't done anything wrong. Just like in Hollywood where you aren't allowed to be a republican because you will be blacklisted.

Seaward wrote:

But yes, I certainly do take issue with being told I'm fine with major news outlets choosing not to run stories because they conflict with the ideological bent of the editors.

Major news outlets choose not to run certain stories more for money reasons than they ever do for ideological ones.

An example one of my very good friends loved to tell me.... When he was fresh out of grad school, working in his first local news station, one of their "investigative journalists" had uncovered a major flaw with a vehicle that was manufactured in that area. The station management called up the manufacturer's management and said, "hey, we're XYZ news station, and we have a story that we are planning on running that may affect you" the manufacturer replied with, "if you run that story, we pull all our ad money"

While this kind of story may not be such a big deal for a company like CNN or Reuters, it certainly is a big deal for local affiliated broadcasts. "Eyewitness News Channel 7" absolutely cannot function without the local and regional advertising money that airs during news hour, and so this can have an affect on what kinds of news stories are aired. Just about the only way a story runs in spite of that kind of looming threat, are the HUGE stories (such as Flint's water) that tend to go national fairly quickly.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

Major news outlets choose not to run certain stories more for money reasons than they ever do for ideological ones.

I'm in the camp that says there are all sorts of reasons a news outlet will choose one story over another. Ideology can play a role, though. Just ask Dan Rather. Or how remarkably quick the nomenclature switch from "illegal aliens" to the much softer "undocumented migrants" came about.

I'm also in the camp that's not fine with suppression of fact to fit a political agenda, despite d-usa's assertion that we all are. I'd like unbiased news, myself.

Seaward wrote:
I'm also in the camp that's not fine with suppression of fact to fit a political agenda, despite d-usa's assertion that we all are. I'd like unbiased news, myself.

I'm with you on fact over narrative.... I think it was a line in season 1 of the Newsroom... the bossman said something like "the problem was that the Government, in granting the one hour mandatory "news" show for itself, did not have the foresight to also mandate that there be no advertising during that hour" (that is, honestly, a really bad paraphrase.... but generally gets the point across)

But I also see things in d-usa's way.... we're all biased in some way. The problem that I see now, especially with ideologically aligned 24 hour news stations, is that we can see numerous examples of where ideology masks the actual facts to better reflect the ideology.... that isn't fact based reporting.... and viewership numbers show that people are generally biased, and will "only" watch a news channel which agrees with their biases.

Did i miss some important palin news because of this? :O

SemperMortis wrote:
Just like in Hollywood where you aren't allowed to be a republican because you will be blacklisted.

Yes, this is why Arnold Schwarzenegger can't get a movie made, and Clint Eastwood hasn't won 4 Academy Awards, 3 golden globes, and a nomination for Best Picture for American Sniper, a movie about conservative hero Chris Kyle, and so on, and so forth.

Seaward wrote:


But yes, I certainly do take issue with being told I'm fine with major news outlets choosing not to run stories because they conflict with the ideological bent of the editors.

Well, you are always welcome to start your own news outlet then

Facebook says the story is a lie, according to the BBC.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36254201

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Facebook says the story is a lie, according to the BBC.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36254201

Come on, Killkrazy, you're killing all the fun here. Now poor conservatives won't be able to play victim by saying they are censored by mean Facebook.

Oh wait, they will still be saying they are. My bad.

I don't know that I believe Facebook. Truthfully, I think any system of human curation is going to fall to at least some degree of bias.

Beyond that, tech companies of recent have a definitely trend of hiring former journalists and then utilizing them poorly, or at all. Disrupted covers this very well.

I don't think it's much of a scandal for all the reasons already well articulated here - the trending box has all the gravitas of a gak feed of Youtube comments, coupled with them not being a news organization and thus having no moral or ethical obligation to report anything at all, let alone provide editorial balance, and so on.

I agree that all the well-known cognitive biases that humans are prone to make it practically impossible for a single person to be truly objective, and group think creates dangers for small teams too.

Big reputable organisations like the BBC are about as reliable as you can ever get, and it's always useful to look at a variety of sources.

Facebook of course isn't remotely a reputable news organisation and doesn't pretend to be. Anyone who relies on their "trending" stream inevitably will be led astray even if it's only due to the inherent bias caused by trend selection which is due to people picking on popular stories first.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I agree that all the well-known cognitive biases that humans are prone to make it practically impossible for a single person to be truly objective, and group think creates dangers for small teams too.

Big reputable organisations like the BBC are about as reliable as you can ever get, and it's always useful to look at a variety of sources.

Facebook of course isn't remotely a reputable news organisation and doesn't pretend to be. Anyone who relies on their "trending" stream inevitably will be led astray even if it's only due to the inherent bias caused by trend selection which is due to people picking on popular stories first.

I agree that Facebook's a horrible source for news. That's not my issue with what they're doing, though. Claiming they're explicitly not doing something while former employees say, "Actually, no, they totally are," in addition to all the other sketchball gak they do - including suppressing happy/sad items from users' feeds to see if they could manipulate an emotional response - suggest that none of this stuff is either benevolent or accidental.

I am afraid it's a case where you must either believe that Facebook are lying or the former employees.

I'm perfectly content believing the company that has a history of manipulating what its users see without their knowledge is lying about manipulating what its users see without their knowledge.

the Gizmodo piece found no actual evidence that Facebook management “mandated or was even aware of any political bias at work.”

http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-trending-feed-bias-claims/

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I am afraid it's a case where you must either believe that Facebook are lying or the former employees.

There's a middle ground, since the employees in question were not employed by Facebook. They were contractors who worked for Accenture. Facebook can literally claim it's employees had nothing to do with any alleged wrongdoing.

I would be prepared to believe that Facebook issued instructions for how the Accenture contractors were supposed to behave while carrying out Facebook work.

If you read the article I linked to, it's pretty clear that Facebook deny the claims, regardless of any semantic distinctions between an employee and a contractor.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I would be prepared to believe that Facebook issued instructions for how the Accenture contractors were supposed to behave while carrying out Facebook work.

If you read the article I linked to, it's pretty clear that Facebook deny the claims, regardless of any semantic distinctions between an employee and a contractor.

A company denied a claim that would make them look bad? Gee

I'm glad that any of my statements with a generic "we" now means that I am speaking with authority for every single poster on Dakka.

At least we are okay with that.

Like conservatives would suddenly abandon facebook in droves even *if* it came out as being true.

Yeah....I think that will happen as soon as pigs start flying.

 TheMeanDM wrote:
Like anyone would suddenly abandon facebook in droves even *if* it came out Facebook murdered babies.

Yeah....I think that will happen as soon as pigs start flying.

Fixed that for you everyone loves Facebook

 jreilly89 wrote:

 TheMeanDM wrote:
Like anyone would suddenly abandon facebook in droves even *if* it came out Facebook murdered babies.

Yeah....I think that will happen as soon as pigs start flying.

Fixed that for you everyone loves Facebook

and at time kill themselves over negative posts about them.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I agree that all the well-known cognitive biases that humans are prone to make it practically impossible for a single person to be truly objective, and group think creates dangers for small teams too.

Big reputable organisations like the BBC are about as reliable as you can ever get, and it's always useful to look at a variety of sources.

Facebook of course isn't remotely a reputable news organisation and doesn't pretend to be. Anyone who relies on their "trending" stream inevitably will be led astray even if it's only due to the inherent bias caused by trend selection which is due to people picking on popular stories first.

BBC is far from unbiased it's like clamming fox is unbiased. Humans will be biased for whoever is giving them cash and fits thier ideology

Please avoid "FTFY" type of posts, please?

Thanks!

Oldmike wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I agree that all the well-known cognitive biases that humans are prone to make it practically impossible for a single person to be truly objective, and group think creates dangers for small teams too.

Big reputable organisations like the BBC are about as reliable as you can ever get, and it's always useful to look at a variety of sources.

Facebook of course isn't remotely a reputable news organisation and doesn't pretend to be. Anyone who relies on their "trending" stream inevitably will be led astray even if it's only due to the inherent bias caused by trend selection which is due to people picking on popular stories first.

BBC is far from unbiased it's like clamming fox is unbiased. Humans will be biased for whoever is giving them cash and fits thier ideology

False equivalency. BBC's biases are no where as blatant as Fox's.

I'll give you that. But they sure do talk about British sports a lot. Very annoying. Its like their target audience is British or something.

I miss AJ America.

Oldmike wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I agree that all the well-known cognitive biases that humans are prone to make it practically impossible for a single person to be truly objective, and group think creates dangers for small teams too.

Big reputable organisations like the BBC are about as reliable as you can ever get, and it's always useful to look at a variety of sources.

Facebook of course isn't remotely a reputable news organisation and doesn't pretend to be. Anyone who relies on their "trending" stream inevitably will be led astray even if it's only due to the inherent bias caused by trend selection which is due to people picking on popular stories first.

BBC is far from unbiased it's like clamming fox is unbiased. Humans will be biased for whoever is giving them cash and fits thier ideology

In contradiction of your unsupported and untrue assertion, various university studies have shown a remarkably low degree of bias by the BBC.

Essentially they always lean slightly towards the government of the day, but always get blamed for bias against the government of the day.