Author Archives: Scalper1

Facebook ( FB ) said Monday that it found no evidence of “systemic political bias” in its Trending Topics, but is nevertheless changing its guidelines after an internal probe. Facebook, in a response to Sen. John Thune , R-S.D., said an internal investigation discovered no clear political bias, following a Gizmodo report that human editors favored liberal stories and sources over conservative media. That spurred Sen. Thune’s request for details, The world’s largest social network said it “could not fully exclude the possibility of isolated improper actions or unintentional bias.” So it’s altering its guidelines. Facebook, which boasts some 1.65 billion users, is becoming the leading news source for more and more people, surpassing Alphabet ( GOOGL ) unit Google as well as mainstream media. So conservatives are worried that the social network has the power to shape, suppress or promote stories or topics not only on its site, but in the broader political discussion. It will no longer rely on so-called news leaders such as the New York Times ( NYT ). It also will stop using curated RSS news feed using the “Media 1K” list of 1,000 news sources. Human editors will get clearer guidelines and more training to try to avoid bias. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met last week with various conservative figures to try to defuse the issue.