This past week, Facebook has been addressing allegations that the platform suppresses conservative news sources in its trending topics section – and the response has been clear: There is no evidence of wrongdoing, but Facebook will investigate to ensure any missteps will be addressed.
The allegations first levied by Gizmodo are that Facebook’s “news curators” don’t include news from conservative outlets, and that the curators “inject” and “blacklist” topics to create a trending section that isn’t necessarily representative of the topics that are actually trending. The Guardian published internal documents from Facebook which reveal that one of the steps in deciding what is “trending” is to check if major news sources covered the event – and of the 10 news sources which curators check to make this decision, a majority would be labelled “liberal” by conservatives.
For a company that is the largest news distributor on the planet, Facebook doesn’t talk about its media practices very often. The Media Insight Project’s report on “How Millennials Get News” found, “of the 24 different news and information topics asked about, for instance, Facebook ranked as the No. 1 gateway for 13 and the second-most popular choice for seven others – meaning it ranked No. 1 or No. 2 for 20 out of 24 topics.” Or, as they summarize it: “ … although most of these people had multiple ways of getting information on these topics, more of them included Facebook in that mix than any other place.”
That fact gives Facebook unprecedented power, and as Wired wrote, the tampering with such an important communication channel feels to many like an “existential threat.” And yet Facebook is not usually held accountable for its practices as a news distributor – the last memorable instance was when Facebook was accused of giving more attention to the ice bucket challenge than to the Ferguson protests.
But what these incidents reveal is an increasing need for more discussions around Facebook as more than just a social media platform. These discussions need to address how Facebook makes judgements about what is newsworthy — and consequently, what that judgement means for news consumption. These discussions need to be ongoing and more wide-reaching than a few instances when Facebook makes a blunder – they need to hold the company accountable the way newspapers are held accountable for the “bundle” – mix of news stories – they provide.
If Facebook doesn’t want to influence news content, then there needs to be a discussion of whether they can be held accountable for influencing the content regardless – if they can really be neutral when their algorithms favor particular types of media content over others. Facebook may want to portray itself as a neutral platform, or even just as a channel for content rather than a shaper for that content – but the technology that transports media is increasingly shaping it, and Facebook’s new emphasis on live video streaming is proof that platforms do drive media content.
If Facebook has a mission when it comes to news content, they need to be more explicit about it. Mark Zuckerberg wrote in his statement about this issue that Facebook’s mission is to “give more people a voice and bring our global community together,” but if that is true, then does Facebook have a responsibility to create more diversity? If so, the question of how to achieve that commendable aim remains: Would consumers be comfortable with Facebook favoring certain types of content or providers? And do we trust Facebook, a company whose main focus is not news media, to make these decisions?
And that is where the heart of the issue lies – in the fact that we have to treat Facebook like a news outlet even though that is not its primary function, because a lot of people’s primary source of news is their Facebook feed. That means the burden of starting this discussion – of asking these questions, and others in the vein – is on us, as millennials consuming news on Facebook. If we want to continue enjoying the benefits of running into news and still remaining responsible, informed citizens, then this is a topic that can’t escape public notice.
Contact Rhea Karuturi at [email protected].