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Rumors that Facebook censored (or downranked) conservative news content weren't entirely new in May 2016, but they gained traction when the tech site Gizmodo advanced them in a 9 May 2016 in article reporting that Facebook news curators actively and purposely suppressed right-wing news content solely for ideological reasons: According to Gizmodo, several former Facebook 'news curators' manipulated the flow of conservative information on the social network (for largely unexplained reasons). A highlighted pull quote on the side of the article cited one purported curator as opining that the practice had a chilling effect on conservative news: The piece was heavy on speculative reasoning but somewhat light on detail. The curators quoted appeared to be describing a system that favored credible news sources over less reliable ones or trendiness, irrespective of topic: In another portion of the piece, former curators noted that the sources through which topics were reported (rather than the topics themselves) were factored into the Facebook trending curation process: Gizmodo's report followed up their previous item about Facebook news curation, an article in which the process was described as favorable to credible news outlets but not to sites known for spreading misinformation or inaccurate and poorly vetted claims: In short, Gizmodo published two articles by the same author about Facebook's news curation practices. The first piece was more process-oriented and described a predictable policy geared towards locating the most credible items from trusted news sources for any trending topic. The second piece went further in claiming that Facebook was deliberately suppressing conservative news, citing unnamed partisan contract workers as the source for those assertions. Facebook responded to our query quickly, and told us that they have rigorous guidelines in place to ensure consistency and neutrality: Interest in the claim persisted, and on 11 and 12 May 2016 purported guidelines for curation were leaked to The Guardian. In response to the controversy, Facebook's VP of Global Operations Justin Osofsky released a Q&A about Facebook news curation policies on 12 May 2016. Later that day, founder Mark Zuckerberg released the following statement: If the Facebook Trending curation guidelines released to The Guardian were accurate and legitimate, the documents in no way supported claims Facebook was suppressing conservative news. The guidelines as issued simply delineated best practices in ensuring that information pushed out via Facebook's powerful platform remained accurate and credible, filtering out sources that might favor rumor or misinformation over credible reporting. While much attention was paid Facebook's rota of trusted news sources (including the New York Times, the BBC, The Guardian, and Fox News), that simply appeared to be a failsafe against false or misleading information filtered in by the algorithm but better explained by an outlet with a track record of credibility. The only major mention of blacklisting notably pertained to items with no basis in reality or fact: A misconception widely repeated in the course of the May 2016 controversy held Facebook was not transparent with respect to the workings of their content curation guidelines. That was demonstrably false, however, as a 21 August 2015 recode article specifically explained such population was accomplished manually once a topic started trending: The claims framed as new by Gizmodo in May 2016 were in fact not at all novel or clandestine; recode described the later-controversial practice several months prior with no ensuing ruckus. Facebook Trending's blacklisting of junk topics was not only not a scandalous development, but to be expected following the social network's crackdown on fake news sites. Prior to Facebook's rejiggering of its algorithms to account for shoddy and fabricated claims, the social network was a breeding ground for the spread of misleading and falsified claims advanced by unethical hoax purveyors.
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