Facebook's Internal Chat Boards Show Politics Often at Center of Decision Making

[Nevilledog]

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Facebook’s Internal Chat Boards Show Politics Often at Center of Decision Making
Employees allege content rules aren’t enforced for Breitbart and other right-wing publishers for fear of public blowback, and management expresses wariness of appearing biased, according to internal...
wsj.com
1:09 PM · Oct 24, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-politics-decision-making-documents-11635100195

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https://archive.ph/ZnDQ3

In June 2020, when America was rocked by protests over the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, a Facebook employee posted a message on the company’s racial-justice chat board: “Get Breitbart out of News Tab.”

News Tab is a feature that aggregates and promotes articles from various publishers, chosen by Facebook. The employee’s message included screenshots of headlines on Breitbart’s website, such as “Minneapolis Mayhem: Riots in Masks,” “Massive Looting, Buildings in Flames, Bonfires!” and “BLM Protesters Pummel Police Cars on 101.”

The employee said they were “emblematic of a concerted effort at Breitbart and similarly hyperpartisan sources (none of which belong in News Tab) to paint Black Americans and Black-led movements in a very negative way,” according to written conversations on Facebook’s office communication system reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Many other employees chimed in to agree.

In the same chat, a company researcher said any steps aimed at removing Breitbart—a right-wing publisher popular with supporters of former President Donald Trump —could face roadblocks internally because of the potential political blowback. “At best, it would be a very difficult policy discussion,” the researcher said.

*snip*

[malaise]

1. Get thee to the greatest page

for visibility

[dalton99a]

2. It's all about money. Facebook's radicalization algorithms are extremely lucrative

Facebook employees focused special attention on Breitbart, the documents show, criticizing Facebook for showcasing the site’s content in News Tab and for helping it to sell ads. They also alleged Facebook gave special treatment to Breitbart and other conservative publishers, helping them skirt penalties for circulating misinformation or hate speech.

Right-wing sites are consistently among the best-performing publishers on the platform in terms of engagement, according to data from research firm NewsWhip. That is one reason Facebook also is criticized by people on the left, who say Facebook’s algorithms reward far-right content.

In many of the documents reviewed by the Journal, employees discussed whether Facebook was enforcing its rules evenly across the political spectrum. They said the company was allowing conservative sites to skirt the company’s fact-checking rules, publish untrustworthy and offensive content and harm the tech giant’s relationship with advertisers, according to records from internal Facebook message boards.

“We make special exceptions to our written policies for them, and we even explicitly endorse them by including them as trusted partners in our core products,” the staffer said of Breitbart.

[niyad]

4. KNR