You could argue that none of this is unusual. Many large media outlets are powerful, somewhat opaque, operated for profit, and controlled by wealthy people who aren’t shy about their policy agendas — Bloomberg News, The Washington Post, Fox News and The New York Times, to name a few.
But there are some reasons to be even more wary of Facebook’s bias. One is institutional. Many mainstream outlets have a rigorous set of rules and norms about what’s acceptable and what’s not in the news business.
“The New York Times contains within it a long history of ethics and the role that media is supposed to be playing in democracies and the public,†Ms. Caplan said. “These technology companies have not been engaged in that conversation.â€
According to a statement from Tom Stocky, who is in charge of the trending topics list, Facebook has policies “for the review team to ensure consistency and neutrality†of the items that appear in the trending list.
But Facebook declined to discuss whether any editorial guidelines governed its algorithms, including the system that determines what people see in News Feed. Those algorithms could have profound implications for society. For instance, one persistent worry about algorithmic-selected news is that it might reinforce people’s previously held points of view. If News Feed shows news that we’re each likely to Like, it could trap us into echo chambers and contribute to rising political polarization. In a study last year, Facebook’s scientists asserted the echo chamber effect was muted.
But when Facebook changes its algorithm — which it does routinely — does it have guidelines to make sure the changes aren’t furthering an echo chamber? Or that the changes aren’t inadvertently favoring one candidate or ideology over another? In other words, are Facebook’s engineering decisions subject to ethical review? Nobody knows.
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