Leaf&Core

Facebook’s News Tab Verifies Racist and Anti-LGBTQ Alt-Right Site Breitbart

Danielle from Leaf and Core
Reading Time: 7 minutes.
Chart showing fake news overtaking real news leading up to the U.S. election in 2016

Fake news outperformed real news on Facebook prior to the 2016 election

Many people already get their news through Facebook. They just scan their feed for news shared by their friends. Facebook’s algorithms have been crafted to push news towards the top of users’ feeds, so they can see content they’ll find interesting first. However, that which we find “interesting” has changed. It’s not always cute puppy gifs or funny memes. Now, political news is pushed to our newsfeeds. Nothing stirs up more controversy, conversation, arguments, and—most importantly—interaction with Facebook, more than controversial or fake news. Facebook can make more money, collect more data, and show you more ads if you stay on its site. That’s why they want to drive engagement by any means necessary, including showing you misleading articles, hate speech, or false campaign ads.

Now Facebook’s looking for a way to maximize news-interested users with a News tab. After fake news outperformed real news on Facebook, turning the tide of the 2016 election, Facebook pledged to change. They introduced some fact checking for blatantly false or misleading news stories, but still leave users to do most of their own fact checking. Facebook said they’d launch a news tab, with only reputable sources of journalism. Instead, they filled it with stories from the likes of Breitbart, a far-right media site rife with misogyny, anti-LGBTQ views, racism, and promotion of xenophobia.

If Facebook learned a lesson from Russia in 2016, it was that they had the tools to undermine our democracy, and—in the name of profit—they should use them.

The Facebook News Tab: What it’s Supposed to Be

Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The Facebook News tab first started around 2016. After Trump’s shocking win, people looked for answers. It was well known that Russia lead a misinformation campaign to benefit Trump, as well as other hacking endeavors. They carried out that falsified media campaign largely on Facebook. Facebook’s demographics are skewing older and more conservative, and conservatives are more likely to buy into fake news that aligns with their personal beliefs. On Facebook, anti-Hillary fake news articles outperformed actual news stories on Facebook.

Facebook carried out a misinformation campaign that indoctrinated Americans and elected Donald Trump.

Politicians and citizens were furious. Facebook’s algorithms prefer controversy over truth, and, as a result, boosted these falsified stories. They proved that a company could undermine American democracy by lying to its citizens. Facebook, struggling to dodge regulations on their business model and ire from Americans, responded quickly: they’d employ fact checking.

Facebook teamed up with, then dropped respectable fact checking organizations like the Poynter Institute and Politifact. We now know why that relationship may have been stretched. Facebook flags some websites automatically, like satire sites like The Onion or Babylon Bee, but still allows incendiary, misleading, and falsified articles to proliferate on people’s news feeds.

Now they’re applying that level of scrutiny to their News tab.

The News tab should be what Facebook says it is: a place to go for factual, unbiased, and human curated news articles. Instead, it’s pandering to its hateful users by including sites known for misleading citizens, like Breitbart.

The True Facebook News Tab

Facebook revealed their new News Tab alongside News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson. News Corp., if you weren’t aware, is the business started by Rupert Murdoch specifically to spread right wing ideals. It was a news company made to buck the trend of highly factual and trustworthy news sources for opinion pieces that engage users. You might know one of their biggest brands: Fox News.

We’re not starting off on a good foot here.

Journalism has room for opinion. It’s important. Opinion helps people realize connections in stories, and the human-level impacts of some stories they may not otherwise understand. Opinion pieces help us harmonize and empathize with each other. However, Fox News, Breitbart, the Daily Caller, and other far-right sources of news took advantage of this tradition. They saw the harmonizing and empathizing approach as “left leaning,” because, to them, compassion is a political ideology. However, unlike division, empathy isn’t very profitable. Hate, anger, fear, and manipulation are profitable. It’s from that tradition that these far-right sites were born.

Now they have a home as “legitimate” conservative voices, drowning out less extremist conservative views and populating your news feed. Now, “balanced” news coverage means factual stories from reputable sources of news alongside hateful rhetoric from others.

It’s in this landscape that Facebook’s News tab thrives. Taking advantage of the controversy of fake articles and ideological bubbles, Facebook has found a way to profit off of dishonest media.

Just What is Breitbart?

Just a few of Breitbart’s hateful and incendiary headlines.

Breitbart is a far-right conservative news outlet founded by Andrew Breitbart in 2007. His political zeal was not lost on readers. He also co-founded The Huffington Post, another site known for emotionally charged articles, this time on the left. Breitbart was always a provocateur. However, Bretbart’s namesake media site, while always incendiary, didn’t become borderline extremist until after his death in 2012. Then, Steve Bannon took over. It became a source of the alt-right, of nationalist, racist, xenophobic, and anti-LGBTQ viewpoints. For many, it became the source, and is often accredited for giving birth to the radicalized alt-right.

“Past [Breitbart] headlines have included “Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew” and “Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy.” The latter article contained the line, “We need the kids if we’re to breed enough to keep the Muslim invaders at bay.” Breitbart, which once featured a “Black Crime” section, has a penchant for publishing racist stories that link people of color and immigrants to crime.”

– Aaron Mak, writing for Slate

Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC) rates Breitbart as a “questionable source.” On their ranking scale, it’s rated as “Extreme Right.” Before you accuse MBFC of bias, they do outwardly rate many news organizations, from the NY Times to the LA Times as “Left-Center” on this scale, meaning they’re balanced sources with a slightly left leaning bias. MBFC remains independent to keep their ratings trustworthy.

“Overall, we rate Breitbart Questionable based on extreme right wing bias, publication of conspiracy theories and propaganda as well as numerous false claims.”

– MBFC

Since 2018, Wikipedia banned the use of Breitbart as a source for the online encyclopedia. It was simple: nothing from Breitbart carried enough fact over fiction to serve as a trustworthy source.

Breitbart isn’t just false stories made to mislead. It’s also a source of hate speech, made to divide or incite fear and violence. A fearful electorate, xenophobic in nature, is more likely to vote conservative. This is why the site pushes fearful narratives and caricatures of Hispanic immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ people, and foreign voices. Its goal is nationalistic fear to drive conservative political engagement, not the spread of factual information.

Amplifying Hate, Fake News, and Violence… for Profit

This is a theme we’ve seen behind every unethical decision Facebook has made. They permitted Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric to remain on their website, as well as other religious hate speech. Hate speech incurs violence. It’s as dangerous as shouting fire in a crowded theater, but with widespread, targeted, and deadly results. But it stirs up a lot of people. You’ve got those who favor the hate speech sharing fake stories, those who combat this hate chiming in, and everyone else either becoming radicalized by it or joining in on the protest. It amplifies divides and tears our society apart. But it drives clicks.

“Brown’s focus on ideology instead of standards for accuracy and accountability is notable.”

– Oliver Darcy, CNN, discussing Campbell Brown, head of global news partnerships at Facebook and her statements on including Breitbart in the Facebook News tab

The almighty click. A like, a news article read, a comment, it’s all information Facebook can gather on you. The more time you spend on Facebook, the more ads they can show you and the more they can target you. Facebook becomes a more attractive advertising platform if they know everything about you and can keep you on the site, looking at those ads, for as long as possible. Content that will enrage will make you engage, and that’s big money for Facebook.

“Mr. Zuckerberg’s only real political affiliation is that he’s the chief executive of Facebook. His only consistent ideology is that connectivity is a universal good. And his only consistent goal is advancing that ideology, at nearly any cost.”

– Charlie Warzel in The New York Times

With Facebook’s business model in mind, it’s clear to see what they’re attempting to do with their news feed. Factor in that they’ve intentionally included non-factual and partisan websites like Breitbart and Fox News into the mix, and it’s clear: this isn’t about delivering news. It’s about driving engagement. Some might say that having a reputable business model would drive more engagement over time, but the sad truth is that Facebook’s just so popular, they don’t have to worry about the damage to their reputation. Facebook’s just too big to fail.

Better Sources of News

Subscribe to the NY Times and support honest journalism

Leaf and Core! Okay, okay, I kid. I highly recommend getting a subscription to The New York Times and The Washington Post. If you have Amazon Prime, The Washington Post will come at a discount, and The New York Times is currently running a promotion. You can get a subscription now for just $8/month. These are both highly reputable and factual publications with little bias.

Prefer news aggregation? Awesome! I use this sometimes too. You might have noticed by the wide variety of sources I use on Leaf and Core. Apple News, Microsoft News, and Flipboard are great tools for sourcing news from a variety of sources. Google News is great as well, however you have to submit to Google’s tracking engines, and you may end up giving the company more personal data than you’d prefer. All of these limit biased sources like Fox News or the Daily Caller, but Apple News has been criticized for allowing Breitbart on their platform as well. Your best bet is still to find reputable news sources and subscribe. You can also use an RSS feed app to keep your most reliable sources of news in one place.

Usually, this is what I do. I have a long list of websites fed into an RSS reader, and I save articles from it to Pocket. It allows you to avoid biased or misleading articles that some news aggregators may promote. Just be wary of your own biases, and use fact checking resources to find publications with honest journalism and little bias.

Facebook’s news engine is driven by controversy, and Mark Zuckerberg has made his political leanings known, he doesn’t want a liberal president like Elizabeth Warren in the office. As a tool that has already undermined our democracy once, don’t use Facebook as a source of news. You won’t get what you want to see, you’ll get what Facebook wants you to see. This is the same company that has done unethical experiments to try to modify the moods of their users. Don’t trust them when they’re telling you how to feel about anything, let alone current political events.

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