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Facebook Intentionally Buried Left-Leaning News Sites

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Donald Trump shaking Mark Zuckerberg's hand

Photo: Donald Trump, via Twitter

Facebook has done a lot to aid Republicans in the United States. They are flexible on their hate speech rules when it comes to conservative “opinions”  on matters of race, religion, gender, or sexuality. They allowed blatant hate speech from Donald Trump leading up to the 2016 election when he called for a ban of Muslims entering the United States. Fake news benefiting Trump and Republicans is now, like it was in 2016, more popular than real news. Facebook even lets Republicans spread it themselves.

This isn’t a mistake, it’s by design. Facebook has allowed right-wing advertisers to “reset the score” after they had been found sharing falsified stories in violation of Facebook’s rules. Each time a right-wing politician broke its rules, Facebook quickly made an “exception” for them. Facebook bends over backwards to keep rule-breaking Republicans on their platform.

This all seemed like Facebook was trying to give right-wing voices “equal” time on the platform. That is, Republicans break the rules far more often than Democrats, so if Facebook applied the rules the same to both of them, Republicans would seemingly disappear from the platform. That wouldn’t be a bad thing. Republicans should have to cut back on outright falsehoods and hate speech.

However, Facebook did far more to aid conservatives. We’ve now learned that Facebook isn’t just boosting right-wing voices, they’re also shutting down left-wing voices. This is done while boosting highly partisan and less factual news sources from the right.

Once again, Facebook’s anti-liberal bias is showing.

Factual and Liberal Sources Make Less Money

We’ve gone over this many times before. Facebook makes money from controversy. A hateful post from a far-right commenter can garner more angry reacts and arguments in the comments than a factual post about climate change or transgender people. As a result, these posts mean more people staying on Facebook and coming back to it throughout their day. Facebook would rather their network spread hate speech, lies, and propaganda than factual information, because the former makes more money.

It has had disastrous consequences. Anti-mask beliefs spread through Facebook, causing the pandemic to rage in the United States and a few other countries. Had Americans followed pandemic procedures, and had our leadership recommended it from the beginning, the country would be free of this virus already. But we didn’t and continue to ignore scientists. This is in part due to falsehoods spread on Facebook.

The Rohingya genocide was driven almost entirely through Facebook. Facebook played such a large role in the genocide in Myanmar that the U.N. report called them out specifically for it. Since then, little has changed at the company, which still does not make removing hate speech a priority.

Fake news is profitable, so Facebook won’t do anything to remove it until they’re forced to.

A Misinformed World

Everywhere it exists, Facebook sows trouble. The rampant spread of fake news and hate speech on the platform means Facebook’s billions of users face a barrage of fake news. Even the most diligent of news aficionados will eventually find a fake story they believe and help it spread. It’s only natural. You can do something 1,000 times, but mess up on the 1,001th time. That one screw up could potentially spread exponentially, especially if the person spreading the fake story is well-known or has a fantastic reputation.

As it turns out though, this fake news bombardment, especially from alt-right sources, is intentional. Now we know Facebook boosts right-wing stories and verifies hate speech while stopping the spread of more trustworthy sources, just because they’re left-leaning.

That’s not to say that all left leaning sources are more factually accurate, however, most fake news stories spread among the right. Being left-leaning doesn’t guarantee factual accuracy, but it does mean truth and investigation are more likely to be important qualities. That’s especially true with sources rated by fact checking websites to be accurate, like Mother Jones, see a dramatic drop in visitors because of Facebook’s decisions.

Affecting Our News Sources

Chart showing a sharp uptick in views on Mother Jones in the third quarter of 2016, then dropping to below pre-2014 levels by 2018 before recovering slightly.

This has been happening since 2017. Since then, Facebook changed their algorithm to devalue left-leaning news sources. Mother Jones estimates they lost between $400,000 and $600,000 per year since Facebook began their crusade against left-leaning news sources.

That’s just one source of news. What happens when a company loses $600,000? They hire fewer journalists, fewer editors. They can’t do as much research or on-site reporting. The site puts out fewer articles and, naturally, reports on less. This hurts the company further, and it also hurts the information we see. Without reliable sources of news, we suffer too.

“As it happens, conservative entities like the Daily Caller are thriving in the everything-­is-opinion world Facebook created. … Of the top 50 stories from US publishers, 15 were screeds from the Daily Caller, Fox News, the Daily Wire, and Breitbart. All other US newspapers, magazines, and broadcast and cable networks combined accounted for another 16. The rest were clickbait from the likes of LadBible and TMZ.”

– From Mother Jones’ findings, reported by Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery

Facebook’s decision plays favorites, deciding which companies should succeed and which should fail. Their monopoly status means there’s little anyone can do without regulatory effort. Antitrust lawsuits can and should be brought against Facebook, but lawmakers haven’t considered this. Instead, they’ve set their sites on the backbone of the free internet itself, Section 230 of the Communications Act. There’s a clear problem and, an existing legal solution. Instead, politicians are using the turmoil to go after internet freedom itself.

Facebook Has to Go

Without a doubt, Facebook has to go. It will not improve on its own. Employee walkouts and departures, as well as user and advertiser protests have changed nothing. A slap on the wrist from the U.N. over their part in genocide changed nothing. Facebook has nearly three billion active users. No boycott could ever be sizable enough to put a dent in that. Therefore, the responsibility lies in the hands of legislators around the world.

Facebook is a monopoly. They’ve collected companies like a 13-year-old collects Pokémon cards. When Instagram or WhatsApp looked like they could offer serious competition to Facebook, the company simply bought them out. Facebook has been large enough to maintain its monopoly by simply gobbling up smaller companies. Enough is enough. This kind of behavior is exactly what existing antitrust laws are supposed to prevent. We now have a duty, not only to use Facebook less, but to demand our lawmakers break the company apart into separate entities. Elizabeth Warren and the co-founder of Facebook were right. It’s time to break up Facebook.

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