When The S*** Hits the Fan

Whistleblowers Confirm #Facebook #Censors Certain Types of News Stories

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(ANTIMEDIA) Former Facebook employees who managed the “Trending News” section of the site are accusing the behemoth social media platform of censoring news stories and “injecting” others to artificially inflate their popularity. Unsurprisingly, in light of these accusations, the developing story appears to have been censored from the site’s list of popular stories, underscoring deeply-rooted problems in the way information is presented online.

The fresh allegations follow a story published last week by Gizmodo, which detailed how some of the journalists tasked with populating the trending news list were overworked and mistreated. The reporters, “a small group of young journalists, primarily educated at Ivy League or private East Coast universities,” select stories for the feed, and also write the headlines and three-line descriptions that show up on the right-hand side of the Facebook home screen.

Gizmodo points out the influence of this seemingly small operation, noting the list of trending stories, “constitutes some of the most powerful real estate on the internet and helps dictate what news Facebook’s users—167 million in the US alone—are reading at any given moment.”

Since the publication of last week’s initial story, other former Facebook employees have come forward to describe the types of stories that were intentionally included in — and excluded from — the feed, which purports to be determined by the stories’ popularity among users.

Rather than reflecting users’ organic interests, however, one of the most glaring components of the Facebook trending stories tool — according to the effective whistleblowers — is the company’s policy of excluding stories about Facebook. According to Gizmodo, “When stories about Facebook itself would trend organically on the network, news curators used less discretion—they were told not to include these stories at all.”

As one former news curator said, “When it was a story about the company, we were told not to touch it. It had to be cleared through several channels, even if it was being shared quite a bit. We were told that we should not be putting it on the trending tool.”

This former employee’s experience was substantiated by at least one other. “We were always cautious about covering Facebook,” another former curator said. “We would always wait to get second level approval before trending something to Facebook. Usually we had the authority to trend anything on our own [but] if it was something involving Facebook, the copy editor would call their manager, and that manager might even call their manager before approving a topic involving Facebook.”

But limiting the exposure of Facebook-centered articles is only one tactic in the social media platform’s manipulation of news stories. As Gizmodo explained:

“When users weren’t reading stories that management viewed as important, several former workers said, curators were told to put them in the trending news feed anyway. Several former curators described using something called an ‘injection tool’ to push topics into the trending module that weren’t organically being shared or discussed enough to warrant inclusion—putting the headlines in front of thousands of readers rather than allowing stories to surface on their own.”

Often, some former employees said, the injected topics would eventually become the most popular trending stories. While on the surface, this practice may seem like a proactive effort to provide more news for users, the injected stories were firmly rooted in establishment pillars of information.

“We were told that if we saw something, a news story that was on the front page of these ten sites, like CNN, the New York Times, and BBC, then we could inject the topic,” said one former curator. Indeed, all three of these outlets epitomize “mainstream” journalism, and, unsurprisingly — or even synonymously — all three outlets have been thoroughly accused of censorship, deception, and bias.

Facebook’s policy to artificially inject stories, as long as they were validated by coverage from outlets like these, reflects the platform’s clear, albeit perhaps unwitting, connection to perpetuating establishment narratives. As the former curator said, “If it looked like it had enough news sites covering the story, we could inject it—even if it wasn’t naturally trending.”

Though boosting placement of relevant news stories seems like a noble cause, the practice clearly violates Facebook’s efforts to make the trending news feed appear as strictly “topics that have recently become popular” on the site.

Whereas censoring stories on Facebook and injecting others were a matter of policy, the subjective biases of the journalists curating stories also reportedly affected the neutrality of the stories presented to users. Though no former curator interviewed by Gizmodo said this was an official protocol, many said stories from conservative outlets were routinely excluded from the trending news list.

One former curator who, as a political conservative was a minority on the curating team, said, “Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending.” He added, “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.”

For example, stories about Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS implicated in unfairly targeting conservative groups, were not included in trending stories. Stories from conservative aggregator, Drudge Report, were also censored, along with stories about conservatarian politician, Rand Paul. “It was absolutely bias[ed]. We were doing it subjectively. It just depends on who the curator is and what time of day it is,” a former curator said, revealing the lack of consistency in Facebook’s reporting practices.

Further highlighting Facebook’s establishment philosophies, Gizmodo noted “stories covered by conservative outlets (like Breitbart, Washington Examiner, and Newsmax) that were trending enough to be picked up by Facebook’s algorithm were excluded unless mainstream sites like the New York Times, the BBC, and CNN covered the same stories.”

While to some left-leaning Facebook users the omission of conservative stories seems like a fair — or even necessary — practice, these fundamentally exclusionary practices should be cause for concern to anyone obtaining news from the trending stories list.

Facebook declined to comment on these allegations, but the site is no stranger to accusations of censorship and manipulating information. The platform was recently caught censoring at least one story unfavorable to Hillary Clinton while multiple groups supporting presidential candidate Bernie Sanders have been suspended. On a different note, Facebook also works closely with the United States government to enable surveillance of the internet, a role that better illustrates the company’s establishment culture than the left-wing biases of individual employees.

Between the individual biases of employees and the broader, more controlling policies of injection and censoring stories about the site, Facebook has proven its incompetence in accurately informing users. Gizmodo reports some former curators said as algorithms were increasingly employed, biases became less pronounced, also noting that the employees worked for Facebook between 2014 and 2015, so if changes have been made, the whistleblowers would not be aware of them.

At the very least, however, the confessions of former curators should raise fundamental questions about journalistic integrity among users who trust the friendly social networking site to deliver information in a responsible, education-oriented manner. As Gizmodo noted, “the revelations undermine any presumption of Facebook as a neutral pipeline for news, or the trending news module as an algorithmically-driven list of what people are actually talking about.”

Perhaps most telling is the trending news section’s reaction to Gizmodo’s breaking story on Facebook news practices: it’s nowhere to be found.

This article (Whistleblowers Confirm Facebook Censors Certain Types of News Stories) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Elizabeth Montag and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

How #Facebook, #Instagram, Google, and Twitter Use Censorship to Kill Free Speech

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Michaela Whitton
May 3, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom — Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter play an increasingly important role in our lives, but a brand new study into online censorship has revealed a number of developing trends regarding how social media platforms are attempting to regulate their users’ speech.

While most readers have likely been lucky enough to evade Facebook jail, others might have friends who have been kicked off the social networking site for designated periods of time for ‘violating community standards.’ Some may even have had their Facebook accounts closed permanently due to the site’s  ‘real names’ policy. Others have likely have had posts flagged or removed for containing nudity or other allegedly offensive content.

“UNFRIENDING CENSORSHIP: Insights from four months of crowdsourced data on social media censorship” is a brand new report that draws on data gathered from users of six social networking sites between November 2015 and March 2016. The inaugural study by Onlinecensorship.org — a collaborative effort between the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Visualizing Impact — asked users to submit reports when their content was reported or their accounts were removed from Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, and YouTube.

“Account suspensions, the most stringent form of moderation, were the most frequent type of content takedown in our dataset,” the report notes.

After analysing the collected data across geography, platform, content type and issue areas, the analysis revealed a number of trends in social media censorship. Here are some highlights of the information gathered from 161 submissions across 26 countries, with content in 11 languages:

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– Facebook was the most frequently reported platform, with account suspensions the most reported content type.

– Nudity and false identity were the most frequent reasons given for the removal of  content on Facebook.

– Of 119 reports received from Facebook users, 13% had been asked to prove their identity to Facebook under its name policy.

– Instagram users tended to report “inappropriate content” as the reason their content was taken down.

– Twitter takedowns tended to be linked to targeted abuse, harassment, or fraud/spam.

– Nearly half of copyright-related takedown submissions came from YouTube.

– 53% of users did not appeal the takedown of their content, 50% said they didn’t know how, and 41.9% said they didn’t expect a response. In four cases content was restored, but in 50 cases the user didn’t receive a response.

– There were widespread reports that flagging is being used for censorship, and 61.6% of users believed that this was the cause for the removal of their content.

“The content was the Wikipedia photo of human anatomy showing a man and a woman in full frontal nudity. It is against Facebook’s guidelines about nudity,” reads one case study.

Although measures were used to help verify reports — and users were given the opportunity to send screenshots to support their claims — onlinecensorship.org did not work with the social media companies to obtain their data. Consequently, the study does not claim to be representative of all content takedowns or user experiences.

EFF explained the importance of tracking how social media companies are regulating the speech of their users:

“As self-ordained content moderators, these companies face thorny issues; deciding what constitutes hate speech, harassment, and terrorism is challenging, particularly across many different cultures, languages, and social circumstances.”

EFF added that while the U.S.-based companies don’t believe their policies constitute censorship, the purpose of onlinecensorship.org is to challenge this assertion by examining how their policies (and their enforcement) may be having a chilling effect on freedom of speech.

After examining how the policies of social media platforms are being enforced — and how this affects the lives of users — the report goes on to make a set of recommendations for how the social media sites can improve the experiences of users and boost their commitment to free expression.

READ NEXT: Wikileaks Drops Hillary Email Bomb That Could End Her Campaign but FB Censored It

Those who wish to report content blocking and online censorship can do so here.

This article (How Facebook, Instagram, Google, and Twitter Use Censorship to Kill Free Speech) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: Tyler Menezes. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

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From theantimedia.org Team

#Obama Jokes About the “End of the #Republic,” Giving Speeches to #GoldmanSachs

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Elizabeth Montag
May 2, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) If the corporate media wasn’t gushing over Justin Bieber’s new haircut or the nation’s lingering transphobia bathroom drama this weekend, it was lauding President Obama for his speech at the final White House Correspondents’ dinner of his presidency.

The black-tie dinner draws the nation’s top celebrities, journalists, and politicians and includes a stand-up comedy routine from the president. The assemblage of attendees often resembles the elite crowd that populates the lavish capital in the Hunger Games — and the president’s statements this weekend detail an oligarchical American society similar to that depicted in the dystopic novels.

This year, the president seemed unusually candid about the country’s state of affairs — even if he articulated them in a comedic, albeit smug, way.

“It is an honor to be here at my last — and perhaps the last White House Correspondents’ dinner,” he said as he opened his set, obviously referencing the increasingly doomed presidential race.

“You all look great. The end of the republic has never looked better,” he said to laughs and applause.

“If this material works well, I’m gonna use it at Goldman Sachs next year,” he said.

The joke could have been referencing his former Attorney General, Eric Holder’s new job at a law firm that lobbies for corporate banks — or, more likely, Hillary Clinton’s exorbitant fees for giving speeches to the loathed company. His comments are particularly jarring considering he accepted massive donations from Goldman Sachs and its employees during both of his presidential campaigns, and upon taking office, invited former Goldman Sachs employees to join his cabinet. He has famously failed to take any meaningful action against big banks.

In spite of his acknowledgment of Goldman Sachs as an influential player in American politics, he appeared to indirectly endorse Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, which has been marred by the influence of special interests, including Goldman Sachs.

“Next year someone else will be standing here in this very spot, and it’s anyone’s guess who she will be,” he said. The president dished out tame insults to all of the presidential candidates, ultimately turning his attention to the chairman of the Republican Party, whom Donald Trump has said “should be ashamed of himself” for the Republicans’ attempts to thwart his nomination.

“GOP chairman Reince Priebus is here as well. Glad to see you feel you earned the night off. Congratulations on all your success. The Republican Party, the nomination process … it’s all going great,” Obama sarcastically quipped.

The president also focused his attention on journalism and freedom of the press in the United States. Whether or not he intended to highlight the revolving door between government and corporate news, he did exactly that.

“Key staff are now starting to leave the White House. Even reporters have left me. Savannah Guthrie, she’s left the White House Press Corps to host the Today show. Norah O’Donnell left the briefing room to host CBS This Morning. Jake Tapper left journalism to join CNN,” he said.

He also joked about the power of journalists to hold politicians and government accountable, referencing a recent award-winning film about reporters:

“As you know, Spotlight is a film, a movie about investigative journalists with the resources and the autonomy to chase down the truth and hold the powerful accountable. Best fantasy film since Star Wars. Look — that was maybe a cheap shot.”

Adding insult to injury, the president, who has worked tirelessly to silence journalists, told reporters in attendance that though they have not always seen eye to eye with him, he still appreciates their work:

“But we’ve always shared the same goal  — to root our public discourse in the truth; to open the doors of this democracy; to do whatever we can to make our country and our world more free and more just. And I’ve always appreciated the role that you have all played as equal partners in reaching these goals.”

Obama has presided over the country’s slip in press freedom rankings, the prosecution of whistleblowers, and the intimidation of journalists. The corporate media he addressed in his speech has, in that same time, shown its corruption and lack of concern for the truth. Amid the current election cycle, establishment news outlets have shown their role is not to educate, but to manipulate, yet Obama maintained “[their] power and [their] responsibility to dig and to question and to counter distortions and untruths is more important than ever.”

As the media celebrated his epic “mic drop” at the end of his stand-up routine, those reading between the lines of his performance witnessed the not-so-secretive mechanisms of chaos, power, and corruption in Washington — as joked about by a president who maintained them.

This article (Obama Jokes About the “End of the Republic,” Giving Speeches to Goldman Sachs) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Elizabeth Montag and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. Image credit: Edalisse Hirst. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

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From theantimedia.org Team

#Wikileaks Drops #Hillary Email Bomb That Could End Her Campaign but FB Censored It

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Michaela Whitton
March 20, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom — On Wednesday, a major archive containing over 30,000 of Hillary Clinton’s emails were released. Though the State Department began releasing the emails in May last year — after a Freedom of Information Act request — it is the first time the messages have been made easily available in a searchable format, courtesy of WikiLeaks. Before the launch, the FBI was investigating the Democratic candidate’s use of a private server during her tenure as Secretary of State. The archive contains over 7,000 emails written by Clinton herself.

The scary, albeit fascinating exposé on who’s in bed with whom in the halls of global power has expanded to include Facebook, according to WikiLeaks. The organization has accused the social networking site of censorship, saying Facebook is blocking users’ access to the latest Clinton dispatch.

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As a result of the outing, Twitter users are calling Clinton wicked, a thug, and a hypocrite. The released emails uncovered that the presidential frontrunner was instrumental in spreading chaos and extremism in Libya. They also revealed that she pushed for oil privatization in Mexico and forwarded emails claiming a Sunni-Shiite war would be good for Israel and the West.

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For those who are fascinated but don’t have the time or inclination to sift through more than 30,000 documents, here is a snapshot of what Clinton’s emails revealed:

This article (Facebook, WikiLeaks and Clinton’s Warmongering Emails) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team