It's no secret that the media tends to function as the agitprop arm of The Party while pretending objectivity, but it's rare for one of its departments to get caught out in a really blatant lie. Like Facebook.
It seems billionaire socialist Mark Zuckerberg's influential trending news section was the creation of a crew of journalists, working out of the basement of the propaganda department's building in New York. The journalists, not Facesoviet's users, determined what stories were "trending" and these, shocked surprise, had a decidedly Party bias.
The trending news section is run by people in their 20s and early 30s, most of whom graduated from Ivy League and private East Coast schools like Columbia University and NYU. They’ve previously worked at outlets like theNew York Daily News, Bloomberg, MSNBC, and the Guardian. Some former curators have left Facebook for jobs at organizations including the New Yorker, Mashable, and Sky Sports.
According to former team members interviewed by Gizmodo, this small group has the power to choose what stories make it onto the trending bar and, more importantly, what news sites each topic links out to. “We choose what’s trending,” said one. “There was no real standard for measuring what qualified as news and what didn’t. It was up to the news curator to decide.”
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As usual, Rod Dreher nails it:
So East Coast elites were making invisible, unaccountable editorial decisions, while Facebook led its members to believe that they were unbiased, that “trending” was only a thing to do with what its users were actually reading.
It was a lie. Mark Zuckerberg is a fraud.
That progleft agitprop is promoted by billionaire socialists like Mark Zuckerberg and his crew of East Coast elite basement hacks, isn't surprising. That Facemonkey's fraudulent "trending" section is read by 600 million people? Terrifying.
You can read Dreher's excellent piece here. While you're at it, note his comments on the recent Times story about Texas and why the lib media just don't get it.
Trending,
LSP
Surely the term "news curator" is an ironic one? From the description of this role - it's a job which Winston Smith could filled very easily. Thus, the workings of the Inner Party (chosen by exam at sixteen) become known.
ReplyDeleteWhat was it that Orwell said about the future? Something like "a rainbow wellie stamping on a human face forever"?
ReplyDeleteI would drop off blogging and drop off the net all together if wasn't for friend's blogs (like yours) and so forth. The progressives make people miserable. Have you seen a photo of Zuckerberg's home? It is surrounded by a high wall with a big gate. No bridge? Why is that?
ReplyDeleteI myself am not shocked or surprised that Facebook slants the news. So does Yahoo and Google. It's just a given. They are owned and run by liberals, and that's what liberals do.
ReplyDeleteThey are no different than CBS, NBC, CNBC, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, PBS, MTV, Al Jazeera, NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Boston Globe, Seattle Intelligencer, San Francisco Chronicle, and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on........
...just add Facebook this list, and take their 'news' for what it's worth: promoting the liberal agenda.
I saw that, LL. Zuckerberg's place is HUGE -- and of course it's surrounded by a tall wall. Why does the billionaire socialist have that? It's a great mystery.
ReplyDeleteFredd, I agree, it's not news, except that they got so blatantly caught out. And who knew the weird "trending" section reached 600 million people? Hunh.
ReplyDeleteI rarely post anything on Facebook and never even notice the trending thing on the right. I was shocked to discover how many people actually get their news from Facebook. I'm always harping on how unreliable the news is - even the so-called alternative sources.
ReplyDeleteLL: Schmuck-erberg is the typical liberal. OTHER people (not him) need to build bridges. OTHER people (not him) need to remove walls. And of course, this jerk will build great, big hairy walls, and pull up those draw bridges over his moat, of which is lousy with hungry crockodiles. Can't have the Great Unwashed soiling his digs, now can we?
ReplyDeleteI'll bet he also wants all guns turned in, so that there is no more gun violence. And all the while that he wants YOUR guns to disappear, he has a few battalions of security personnel armed to the teeth to protect himself and what's his.
I don't know his position on the 2nd Amendment, but I bet I am not far off.
I was shocked too, Adrienne. News? From Facebook? Who knew. Then there's the "basement hacks." At least one or more of them developed a conscience, perhaps.
ReplyDeleteFredd: I don't think Zuckerburg's too keen on the 2nd. I don't know how large his armed security detail is.
ReplyDeleteYou'd have to be quite mad to take your news from Facebook or anything like it. I only use it to keep in touch with old buddies like the Padre here, and my interests like narrow gauge steam railways, and old British motorcycles. Politics, forget it (it is very liberal I agree, and I'm a moderate).
ReplyDeleteI generally look at the Guardian - the UK Lib paper and the Telegraph, the UK Conservative paper and then I guess between them for my news!!
I'm all for partisan journalism, and its opposite, Lukeya, provided it's honest about itself. For all I care, Facefraud can be a standard bearer for the new Maoism or the Hollow Earth, or whatever. But it shouldn't pretend its bizarrely widely read "news" section -- who knew it had one? -- is somehow impartial and user driven when it isn't. That's deceitful.
ReplyDeleteA lot of the rightist Telegraph journos I used to know liked the Graun, curiously. That aside, how much of what passes for journalism and "covering the news" is just a hack up of government PR -- press releases and briefings? But more on that discouraging trend later.
I think your concerns about Government PR are extremely well founded Padre both in the US and the UK. They are a bunch of lying, deceitful sob's, but that is surely as it always has been. There's just more of it now.
ReplyDeleteThat's for sure, Lukeya. Dreher's got an interesting piece on it somewhere -- I'll see if I can dig it up.
ReplyDelete