Video: Fox News’ Stuart Varney says Facebook, Zuckerberg do not want Trump or conservative news on site
Is Facebook censoring conservative content in order to steer users to more liberal news stories, thereby influencing their opinion? That was the topic of discussion by Fox Business’ Stuart Varney, who said in no uncertain terms that the social media giant and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, absolutely do not want to see conservative outlets or information about presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump on the site.
Here’s video of that discussion:
According to Newsmax:
An examination by the Gizmodo blog of whether Facebook pushes a specific political agenda by deftly selecting what type of news its users are exposed to has generated concern among conservative news outlets that they are being sidelined, if not outright blacklisted.
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The blog reports said that a small group of like-minded people at Facebook control what constitutes trending news. Their importance is magnified because an item appearing in that section can boost clicks by many thousands and help set the agenda for any day.
Gizmodo says that its investigation showed that these “news curators” are instructed to pick items from preferred media sites without adhering to an impartial standard.
Naturally, sites like Breitbart.com are essentially blacklisted from Facebook’s “Trending” section. No doubt, because it happens to fall to the right of center. Glenn Beck’s The Blaze also appears to be on Facebook’s blacklist.
This despite Breitbart’s popularity on Facebook.
Breitbart Tech added:
Breitbart has remained within Facebook’s top 25 most engaged publications for over six months in a row, and was at number six in the most commented-on English-speaking outlets last July. In March it was revealed that Breitbart sat at number 14 for the largest news publications active on Facebook during January, and in October last year Breitbart sat at number 9 of Facebook’s most shared publishers, just behind the BBC and ahead of Yahoo.
This would appear to run counter to Facebook’s claims of supporting free expression. Of course, it’s no surprise that Facebook’s actions are the exact opposite of its rhetoric.
What else can one expect from a company whose moderators can’t tell the difference between actual pornography and a picture of a lilac tree?
As a final note, this is just one topic being covered in a new book that I, along with Adina Kutnicki, an investigative journalist based in Israel, are in the process of writing. That book is currently set to be published sometime this fall. Stay tuned for further updates.
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