How Facebook Became The Old Media, Only Worse

Facebook is re-building the gatekeeper role once claimed by The New York Times editorial board, but with less accountability.

By Robert Tracinski

A report on the inner workings of Facebook’s “Trending Topics” headlines exposes how Facebook contractors routinely manipulated the news feed to exclude topics and news sources of interest to people on the right. Here’s how a whistleblower put it:

I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz. 

The giveaway, really, is that the people who manage Trending Topics call themselves “news curators.” Whenever you see the word “curator” or “curate” outside of an actual museum, it means paternalistically chosen based on some hipster recent college grad’s notion of what’s good for you.  Facebook is a private company and has a right to do what it wants with its news feed. But this is still big news, for three reasons.

(1) Facebook Lied.....(2) Facebook Broke the Promise of New Media.......(3) Big, Social Media Companies Dominate New Media..........To Read More...