Here's an idea.
Even algorithms can't save Facebook
from the bias of reporting the news.
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In case you missed the news because it wasn't trending
on Facebook, Facebook's trending news team has been in the news.
Not long ago, the whole department
got the axe after Gizmodo reported
that they'd been suppressing conservative news items
and sources.
This caused a stir, and perhaps rightfully so.
Facebook is used by all stripes of people
with all manner of beliefs and politics.
It's where those people go to get their news.
Writing for the "New York Times,"
Farhad Manjoo described Facebook as the world's most influential
source of news according to every of available measure
of size.
And it would be dismaying, to say the least,
to learn that your news source suppresses
topics most important to you.
Also dismaying, because Facebook can actually
sway public opinion.
Enough people use Facebook, and Facebook is good enough
at directing user experience, that it is as, if not more,
capable than a standard news outlet or The Oatmeal
when it comes to moving the needle on public perception.
I attribute Sriracha's popularity
significantly to Matthew Inman.
So, but OK-- a timeline.
In early May, Gizmodo posts their expose, and Facebook
denies the presence of bias.
The Senate Commerce Committee then
demands insight into Facebook's editorial system
and wants a list of the news sources removed or blocked
from trending.
On August 26, the Facebook announces
its trending news team would be axed
and that the trending algorithm would
be significantly more, though not entirely, algorithmic.
On August 29, an article incorrectly claiming
Fox News contributor Megyn Kelly was
fired for secretly supporting Hillary Clinton trends.
The Trending News topics continue
to be a shadow of their former usefulness, let's say.
On August 30, Digiday posts an interview
with an anonymous former Facebook Trending News
editor who confirms that their team, like much of Silicon
Valley, was left-leaning, and that though they were a news
team in name, there was very little editorial oversight
until Facebook got called out.
In their words, "It never seemed like anyone
in the company ever actually understood what we did
or understood how the topics were curated."
Now it's very easy to understand.
Robot brains.
In light of this whole thing, there
are then two questions that I want to ask.
The first is why is there an expectation
that Facebook have zero bias?
And second, what does Facebook do
in light of that expectation?
Right off the bat, we should talk about a thing
that we've already talked about.
The expectation that any new source will be free from bias
is an unfair one.
In the past, we've quoted Glenn Greenwald,
who has said that there's no such thing
as neutrality, only transparency.
Journalist and Professor Jay Rosen
talks about how the view from nowhere,
the capability to report on events
without personal inclination, is mythological.
Neutrality and the view from nowhere
are vestiges of a traditionally positivistic approach
to journalism which, we learn over and over again,
is too high an ideal for mere modern mortals.
And this is just as true for what Facebook does--
aggregation, curation, editorial, publishing--
as it is for literal, on-the-ground reporting done
by people.
Miss, for $1, can you believe this
is Blake Lively without makeup?
No.
She looks good.
OK, so, the first source of an expectation
that Facebook itself is unbiased is probably the fact that news
feeds are populated by friends.
Yes, there is a small cadre of contrarians in everyone's feed.
But for the most part-- and Facebook understands this,
so they design for it-- Facebook is for seeing things you like,
things that you agree with, things
that you are entertained by.
That's why the contrarians are so frustrating.
They ruin Facebook.
The idea here is that Facebook mostly
shows things which align with one's world view.
Because hey, you are the editorial director
of your friendships.
And Facebook is the positive reaction-skewing editorial
director of your friendships on Facebook.
So one may start to think of Facebook as unbiased,
because on two levels, it works to show things
that align with one's own bias.
That's how ideology functions-- the complete absence of tingle
is how you know it's working.
The Trending News pane is a little different, though.
That purports to show topics that a large number of people
are sharing and talking about.
If you're conservative and you discover that that's not
exactly the case, well, then that's
grist for the theory mill-- the theory
that the mainstream media colludes to silence,
or at least not spotlight, your viewpoints
because the liberal elite is in your internet messing
with your hashtags.
Which is exactly what happened.
But also, I mean, this is a thing
that's widely understood about publishers and news
organizations-- that they have politics.
Facebook trafficking in slant is no different from the rest
of the news media.
They may not have the same editorial oversight
and standards as other news giants--
and that is a lamentable problem.
But just like "where there's smoke,
there's fire," where there's editorial, there's partiality.
And that is true even when the editorial is guided by code.
No one is hanging other major news publishers out
to dry for their preferences, because duh,
people have preferences.
But is Facebook people?
It's a weird question to ask.
But before this debacle, there was not
widespread understanding that Facebook does or even could
have bias.
Arguably, even Facebook didn't understand.
Why?
Because algorithms, I think.
Facebook is a technology product run by algorithms.
What's an algorithm?
Well, it's not a person, that's for sure.
It's the result of programming and computation
and, fundamentally, dispassion-- but also not.
Insofar as data collected about the world
contains and reflects bias, which it almost certainly does,
algorithms that operate on that data
will also contain and reflect bias.
This is true down to data sets as seemingly
neutral as whole languages.
Source.
For real.
It's like a-- it's a recent study.
You should read it.
The practice of thinking that because
a technological operation based on data has transpired,
its result must be free of bias, is
something former Kickstarter VP of Data Fred Benenson
has described as mathwashing.
Quote, "Using math terms-- algorithm, model,
et cetera-- to paper over a more subjective reality.
Algorithm and data-driven products
will always reflect the design choices of the humans
who built them," Benenson said. "And it's
irresponsible to assume otherwise."
Basically, where we may understand
news publishers and newsrooms and reporters
to have bias because they're people, for better or worse,
computers acting autonomously with algorithms and models
are often thought to have none, even though that
is demonstrably not the case.
Sources.
So many source-- endless source--
an embarrassment of sources.
They're all good.
Read them all.
Even trending, which sounds like it should be really simple--
like, oh, it's just popular.
That is a complicated thing.
You know what's always trending?
Weather.
Lunch.
Right off the bat, editorial is required,
unless you want #LUNCH in your face all day, every day.
It's also in the economic interest of publishers
to catch things as if not before they trend so that they can
ride the wave of eyeballs and clicks, which means trending
is often not a fact, but a forecast.
And we all know the reputation forecasts have.
For a lot of people, though, this
is exactly the value of trending items-- not what is
but what will be popular, because being
ahead of the curve is cool.
Also are trends in an area or worldwide?
Are they sorted by language?
Facebook is a global service, so pure trending topics
would likely never be in just your native tongue.
A mistaken perception that algorithms "just get it done"
causes flabbergastery when human involvement in trending topics,
which is the norm from the get-go,
is reported on in connection with editorial politics,
a thing which is inseparable from every form of news,
even if it's just curation.
Even if it's algorithmic curation.
As sociologist Zeynep Tufekci said to the "Wall Street
Journal," "Choosing what to highlight in the Trending
section, whether by algorithm or humans,
is an editorial process."
Facebook is in a "get you a man who can do both" territory,
except on a double axis-- algorithmically-powered social
connection and news provision for any given person
along the political spectrum.
This is tough for a thousand reasons--
the political climate in general, the political climate
of the tech sector, political discourse
online, ongoing social media design problems--
but it would seem, also, Facebook itself.
Despite somehow becoming a media giant, a publisher
and aggregator of content and news and stories,
they simply don't seem to have or be
interested in strong editorial standards
and practices, perhaps because of a view
that algorithms make those things unnecessary.
Well, it would seem, in fact, that algorithms
may make them more necessary.
Georgia Well for "The Wall Street Journal"
points out, "In recent days the 'trending' lists
have appeared more flawed than when humans were in charge.
There have been false stories, misidentified keywords,
and celebrity gossip in the place of more serious news."
So what's Facebook's response here?
They could develop an ecumenical,
politically diverse if not divergent
newsroom, or newsrooms.
Abandon the fairy tale of algorithmic objectivity,
even as it relates to trending, and just focus on coverage.
But can they?
Will they?
The trending editor that spoke with Digiday guessed that
Trending News would probably just be shut down entirely,
maybe not because it doesn't work, but because it can't.
What do y'all think?
Why is there an expectation that Facebook be unbiased?
And is it possible for Facebook to meet that expectation?
And if so, how?
Let us know in the comments, and I will respond to some of them
in next week's Comment Response video.
In this week's Comment Response video,
we talked about your thoughts regarding "First!"
If you want to watch that one, you
can click here, or find a link in the doobly-doo.
One small bit of news.
Next week on the 22nd, here in New York City, PBS Digital
Studios is going to be hosting a Nerd Night at the YouTube
Space, where I'm going to be giving a talk,
and Joe Hanson's going to be giving a talk, and Sarah
from The Art Assignment, and everybody's going to be there,
talking about stuff that they're interested in.
So we'll put a link to that in the doobly-doo.
It is a free event.
It is 18-plus.
So yeah, maybe we'll see you there.
We have a Facebook, an IRC, and a Subreddit,
links in the doobly-doo.
And the Tweet of the Week comes from Nathan Scott,
who points us towards an article about Twitch Chat beating
a chess grandmaster, which is very related
to the stuff I'm going to be talking about at Nerd Night.
And last but certainly not least,
this week's episode would not have been possible or good
without these human editors.
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