More and more often, the response most millennials give to the question, “Where do you get your news?” is, “Mainly social media sites. I find out what’s important from what people share on Facebook.”
Traditional broadcast outlets such as television, radio and newspapers have been capsized for more social networks that capitalize on the shareability of the news.
Facebook has positioned itself as a leading news aggregator in the multimedia industry. On Monday, Gizmodo released an article that reported ex-Facebook employees have admitted to routinely suppressing conservative news in the past via their trending section.
I have a problem with this, and it’s not because I lean conservatively. Everyone should have an issue when a content aggregator misuses its power.
Facebook has been pervading specific algorithms made to evenly distribute the news that is being rapidly circulated through social communities on the Interwebs.
These sharable moments are called “trending topics.”
In 2014, as an effort to compete with its counterpart, Facebook introduced their own trending section in the upper right-hand corner of its site. This little box is arguably one of the most powerful conduits of modern news — it’s easily clickable and more importantly, it’s sharable.
Essentially, Facebook’s news curators of the trending news section were asked to artificially omit and inject selected stories out of and into their site.
These curators successfully suppressed topics like Mitt Romney, Rand Paul and the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Ironically, the #BlackLivesMatter campaign, notably championed by Facebook’s team, was injected as a trending topic in order to receive the massive support it eventually had.
Here, I think it’s important to realize there is a fine line between omission and injection. It is plausible to understand Facebook wants to create a meaningful product for its consumers, which is why social media campaigns are articulately installed via the trending section.
That being said, I draw the line when Facebook actively chooses to extract topics that have garnered specific support via their audience.
If a community of 167 million users is going to seek truthful information via Facebook, it should be expected that the information be reflective of the things that members share.
At the opinion section of the Indiana Daily Student, we editorialize things by hand selecting topics of interest to be discussed during an editorial board, and the end product is stamped with our own opinionated approval.
In many ways, the op-ed is analogous to a Facebook’s operations — we share our daily opinions on certain news stories and implant our own biases and beliefs onto said topic, all while maintaining the credibility of an informed yet diverse group of college students. If that is what Facebook wants to do as well, then they should own up to it.
Until then, the trending section should stop constructing what’s trending and start being true to what the people care about.
jlkarl@indiana.edu
@jkarl26
