Facebook Says an Investigation Found No Evidence of Bias in a News App
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Version 0 of 1. SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook said on Monday that an internal investigation found no evidence of systemic political bias in the selection of news presented in a section of its app called Trending Topics. Even so, the social network, which is making a tour of contrition after accusations that it actively suppresses conservative content, said it would make some changes to Trending Topics, including no longer referring to a list of national news sources — like Fox News, The New York Times and BuzzFeed News — to “boost” topics appearing on its Trending Topics. “These improvements and safeguards are designed not only to ensure that Facebook remains a platform that is open and welcoming to all groups and individuals, but also to restore any loss of trust in the Trending Topics feature,” Colin Stretch, Facebook general counsel, said in a statement posted to the company’s site. The move is the latest attempt by Facebook to control political criticism after a report from Gizmodo, the technology news site, which cited two former Facebook news curators as saying some conservative news was not promoted on Trending Topics, depending on the individual biases of staff members. Trending Topics shows up as the list of the most-talked-about items of interest on Facebook, and appears in the top right corner of the desktop site for hundreds of millions of users. To counter the accusations, especially from Republicans who said they could no longer trust Facebook as an impartial platform, the company held a meeting with a group of conservatives at its Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters and published its internal editorial guidelines. Facebook has pushed back hard against the criticism. On Monday, it said that it could find no evidence of any systemic suppression in the section and that “conservative and liberal topics are approved as trending topics at virtually identical rates,” according to a blog post. The Silicon Valley company published results of the internal investigation and its changes in a letter to Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, who had earlier demanded answers about how Trending Topics works. “Private companies are fully entitled to espouse their own views, so I appreciate Facebook’s efforts to address allegations of bias raised in the media and my concern about a lack of transparency in its methodology for determining trending topics,” Senator Thune said in a statement. At least one conservative-leaning publication was skeptical of Facebook’s findings. Stephen K. Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News, which declined to attend the meeting at Facebook last week with other conservatives, called for more transparency from the company and said in an emailed statement on Monday: “It comes as no surprise that Facebook did an internal investigation and declared itself innocent. We don’t need more dissembling, photo ops or happy talk.” The New York Times found no widespread examples of intentional bias on Trending Topics, based on interviews with current and former Facebook employees. Instead, the company’s Trending Topics team was characterized as having a problematic culture made up largely of contract journalists, some of whom said there was a lack of oversight from and communication with management. Still, Facebook on Monday noted it could not rule out the isolated biased actions of any particular individual, nor could it dismiss unintentional bias in its guidelines or policies. To combat that, the company will make some changes to how Trending Topics functions, including eliminating the list of external media sites and RSS feeds to judge which material should be shown as trending across Facebook. “We want people to feel confident that our community welcomes all viewpoints, and we are committed to designing our products to give all people a voice and foster the free flow of ideas and culture,” Mr. Stretch wrote. |