Shush: You can’t believe that which you don’t know
It is no secret that Facebook’s creator (Mark Zuckerberg) has been spotted Leaning “to the Left” on virtually every American issue. However several ex-employees of the social-media giant “pulled back the covers” on something that we all have suspected Facebook of doing for a long time.
In 2014, I wrote controversial blog-post in which I accused facebook of intentionally tampering with it’s Website’s algorithms in order to suppress news and information that it does not agree with (typically Christian and Conservative content). However because no tangible evidence of this could be uncovered, it was at best well-researched speculation.
However 2 years later, information has emerged that corroborates this theory.
Ex-Employees: Facebook Hiding News
According to reports, several former Facebook employees have confirmed that Facebook has been involved in “silencing” or at best “quieting” conservative ideas by artificially “injecting” or “removing” Trends in order to favor “Left Leaning” topics.
As reported by Gizmodo:
“Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential “trending” news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project. This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site’s users.”
So why is this a problem?
The sad truth is that for younger Americans, Facebook is their primary (if not only) source of news. However what happens when mega-companies (such as Facebook) begin to use their power and influence to cultivate political views and suppress the free-exchange of information?
There is a fine line between “Journalism” and “Indoctrination”, and I would argue that Facebook is treading dangerously close.