Some interesting (and surprising) observations from Glenn Beck:
It was like affirmative action for conservatives. When did conservatives start demanding quotas AND diversity training AND less people from Ivy League Colleges.
I sat there, looking around the room at ‘our side’ wondering, ‘Who are we?’ Who am I? I want to be very clear — I am not referring to every person in the room. There were probably 25–30 people and a number of them, I believe, felt like I did. But the overall tenor, to me, felt like the Salem Witch Trial: ‘Facebook, you must admit that you are screwing us, because if not, it proves you are screwing us.’
What happened to us? When did we become them? When did we become the people who demand the Oscars add black actors based on race?
Good questions. I agree that Facebook should do whatever it wants to do, but that it should be transparent.
[Update a while later]
I agree with the last point. Automation is forcing “News” (a panoptic noun made from the letters of the points on a compass) to become, in the 21st Century, the comparative reductio ad absurdum of the echo chamber of “Like”.
As in, I prefer to read the evening likes after dinner….
Dave
Listening to Glenn Beck, it appears that Facebook does what it can to stop people from gaming the algorithm. They constantly change it in order to prevent those who have figured out how it works from overwhelming Facebook. Huffington post’s reach dropped 70% at one time when the algorithm changed.
It doesn’t have to be transparent, but when discovered, don’t lie about it.
I don’t get news from Facebook so I can’t form an opinion whether they filter news.
I have seen it in other places that are thought to be impartial.
Tyson’s quote fabrications are a litmus test. There’s no doubt whatsoever Tyson gave a false account of President Bush’s post 9-11 speech.
Are Tyson’s fabrications mentioned on Tyson’s biography in Wikipedia? No. This information is frequently censored by Wikipedia’s editors.
Is Tyson’s story listed in Snopes? I can’t find it. It’s a false story that keeps popping up. That video is *still* being uploaded by Tyson fans even nearly two years after Sean Davis outed Tyson. This widely circulated falsehood certainly seems Snopes worthy.
The problem is the millennials *are* getting their news via Facebook. The real story here I fear is not that there is bias at Facebook, intentional or otherwise, but the idea that information that comes to us is factual only if it is consensual. We’ve already seen the abuse of truth from the Ben Rhodes revelations in the New York Times and his endless for-hire sock puppets. The most fearful thing in the article is Rhodes correct appraisal of the situation that a press that lacks the resources to do independent fact checking has already sacrificed journalism on the altar of economics. They are no longer acting in the role of reporter, but of propagandist, all that’s left is merely picking sides and “driving the consensus”. And truth? Which emoticon can I use to consign what I’ve just read when by some reason of luck I just happen to know it to be false? Zuckerberg has been on record in the past that there will never be a “dislike” button on Facebook because in essence, that is antithetical to a social network. Welcome to the Brave New World of truth as consensus marketing.
Truth by consensus is troubling. Worse is the apparent belief on the Left that reality can be shaped to their wishes if enough of us would just Believe their idiocy. Some of us still believe that objective truths exist independent of belief.
Dislike antithetical to a social network? The nature of human society is to form groups, some of which naturally oppose each other. Absent an ability to tag a post as “weapons grade stupid” or similar the system is less able to identify who’s likely to fit in my group.
… But such nuances are lost on the feel good Left.