Facebook employees have often omitted news related to conservative politics from the site's trending list, according to a report by Gizmodo that has sparked a lot of commentary on social media.
A former Facebook employee who did not reveal his name told Gizmodo that employees routinely suppressed news stories that were of interest to conservative readers while artificially adding other stories to the trending list.
Facebook told Reuters on Monday that it has strict guidelines for maintaining neutrality and those guidelines do not prohibit any type of news from appearing in trending topics. But the social network did not directly respond to questions about whether employees had removed conservative news from the list.
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The report upset many users on social media, with several journalists and commentators criticizing the social network for bias.
“In addition to fueling right-wing persecution, this is also a key reminder of the dangers of Silicon Valley’s control of content,” Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) wrote on Twitter,
“For anyone who cares about press freedom, this is very scary!” Bloomberg editor Bill Grueskin (@BGrueskin) also wrote.
“Former Facebook Workers” quickly became one of the top 10 trending topics on Twitter in the US after the Gizmodo article was published.
The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), one of the groups reportedly removed from the trending list, said it would be closely monitoring the incident.
“If we can prove that the allegations are true and accurate, that would be very disappointing!” said CPAC Communications Director Ian Walters.
A post on Facebook's Help Center says that the trending section of the site shows you topics that have recently become popular on the social network. Some of the factors that determine whether a topic is trending or not include engagement, relevance, pages you've liked, and your location.
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