By Hunter
Monday Nov 14, 2016 · 3:44 PM EST
After Facebook shut down their curated news editors due to complaints from conservatives that the company was “biased” against them, fake news on the site has become an enormous problem. Gizmodo now reports that Facebook had a plan to begin removing hoaxes and fake news from users' news feeds—but shelved it, too, because most of the fake stories were coming from conservative sites.
According to two sources with direct knowledge of the company’s decision-making, Facebook executives conducted a wide-ranging review of products and policies earlier this year, with the goal of eliminating any appearance of political bias. One source said high-ranking officials were briefed on a planned News Feed update that would have identified fake or hoax news stories, but disproportionately impacted right-wing news sites by downgrading or removing that content from people’s feeds. According to the source, the update was shelved and never released to the public. It’s unclear if the update had other deficiencies that caused it to be scrubbed.
“They absolutely have the tools to shut down fake news,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous citing fear of retribution from the company. The source added, “there was a lot of fear about upsetting conservatives after Trending Topics,” and that “a lot of product decisions got caught up in that.”
This is of course obvious to most longtime followers of online news; there are a multitude of small, partisan sites that craft fake or conspiracy-minded "news", and the clear majority of them are aimed at conservatives. This is so obvious that it's now a legitimate business plan for Eastern European trolls; publish scandalous-sounding fake stories, then reap the ad revenue when gullible conservatives click the links. Why this same approach does not work as effectively on (ahem) non-conservative consumers shall be left unspoken, lest we be accused of elitism here.
It's only a legitimate business plan now because Facebook was so cowered by anger from the far-right that their own misleading news stories were being "silenced" by the company that Facebook eliminated editorial discretion entirely; now even clearly fraudulent and hoax posts get pushed alongside real news, and conservatives couldn't be happier or prouder about it. Facebook finds themselves hamstrung; if they take steps to protect their users from hoaxes, the perpetrators of those hoaxes will again be Sad.
And Facebook's board has made it very clear their duties are not to their users, or the news, or the nation, but to conservative peddlers of fraudulent news who might get Sad.
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