ZUCKERBERG: 'No evidence' to support Trending News controversy

Advertisement

Advertisement
Mark Zuckerberg Axel Springer interview

Daniel Biskup

Mark Zuckerberg says that Facebook has found "no evidence" to support a report from Gizmodo that alleges that the editors running the website's Trending News panel buried news from outlets with a politically conservative slant, and promoted non-trending stories that were more liberal in nature.

"We have rigorous guidelines that do not permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or the suppression of political perspectives," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday.

The controversy arose after Gizmodo's report quoted several former news "curators" who said that the team routinely omitted articles from conservative news sources and could make objective decisions to "inject" stories that weren't actually trending.

Complimentary Tech Event
Transform talent with learning that works
Capability development is critical for businesses who want to push the envelope of innovation.Discover how business leaders are strategizing around building talent capabilities and empowering employee transformation.Know More

Earlier today, Facebook posted the guidelines it gives its news curators on how to pick stories that appear in the Trending News panel. Those guidelines say that curators are supposed to blacklist news posts only if they're false or if they duplicate another topic already covered. They also say that curators may inject stories, but only if they're shown to be trending by an alternate tool (the "Trending Demo" tool) that the curators don't normally use. They are not supposed to inject topics based on their own editorial judgment.

Zuck's full response is here:

Advertisement

This is the part of Facebook everybody's in an uproar about - not the main news feed, but the little "Trending" box to the side:

_1__Facebook_

Facebook

 

 

NOW WATCH: Clever ways to reuse your old iPod