Hilariously, this is what Thune had to say about the Fairness Doctrine when he sponsored an amendment to prevent the FCC from stepping in on talk radio;

> Our amendment would have helped preserve the vibrant marketplace of ideas we have today in our media. Our support for freedom of conscience and freedom of speech means that we must support the rights granted to even those with whom we disagree. Giving power to a few to regulate fairness in the media is a recipe for an Orwellian disaster.

So it's an Orwellian disaster for the fairness doctrine to extend to talk radio, but he's okay with the government threatening a private internet company to make sure there's enough conservative opinion being displayed? Nice scruples.

Rush Limbaugh used to say that talk radio didn't need "equal time" protection, because talk radio was "equal time" to the entire rest of the newsmedia. And, having grown up in the 80's, I think he was right.

Freedom of speech (in the US) online shouldn't be taken for granted.

During the aughts, treating political and opinions blogs as donations in kind, and therefore subject to campaign finance rules, was pushed pretty hard.

Also, has this senator asked the same of CNN/MSNBC/Fox/etc?

The expectation of FB is very different. A normal user would assume that the ranking is based on a news link popularity: sharing, clicks or some other user metric.

Most Fox news viewers fervently believe Fox news is fair and balanced. FYI. AFAIK, masquerading as bias-less is not illegal.

Both lying and obfuscation are completely legal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Akre#Whistleblower_lawsui...

This article helped me to better understand some of what's going on:

"Agnotology ... is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology

Yep, and they came out with a report to let normal users know that's not how it works.

Which report is this? I've seen the Facebook press release, I've seen Tom Stocky's post, but I've never seen this report. Source?

And the biggest issue I have, is that as far as I know, from January 2014 to present, Facebook's help page was written in a way to mislead users on how trending topics actually work [1]. From reading that help description, most users, including me, imagined Trending topics to work as /u/cft described. Yet that page has no mention that every single trending article on Facebook is curated by a human. How is that not an enormous oversight?

[1] https://www.facebook.com/help/737806312958641 How does Facebook determine what topics are trending?

> Trending shows you topics that have recently become popular on Facebook. The topics you see are based on a number of factors including engagement, timeliness, Pages you've liked and your location.

> On a computer, the topics are grouped into 5 categories: All News, Politics, Science and Technology, Sports and Entertainment.

I disagree. A normal user would assume their network would influence trending news.

What if a larger proportion of Facebook users are younger, which typically leans left, and therefore left news trends more? Oh, wait it is that way...

And it is.

It's not the same because neither one of those is essentially the only global news network whereas FB, and vkontakte to a much smaller degree, is the only social network with news which has a global virtually monopolistic shop.

Cft might have a point, if facebook is essentially tricking people into thinking content is unbiased, that might be considered fraud.

You mean like Fox news, "Fair and Balanced?"

Facebook is trying to become a defacto medium for inter-personal communication globally. It's more akin to a telephone company not handing out phone numbers to people it deems "undesirable". Fox is one-way media. Quite different.

I disagree. I like the analogy of a magazine or newspaper publishing letters to the editor. There is a two way aspect, but clearly the editors choose what to publish.

No, the newspaper or magazine has clear editorial. It's very clear that this is what Fox News or The New York Times or Wall Street Journal is saying.

People think that Facebook is a place where their friends, and family post things. By extension, they think that Facebook trends are just "what's popular" not, what Facebook as a company is saying or endorsing.

No one holds Facebook responsible for a topic that is trending. Actually, I take that back, a bunch of people do but, they are dismissed out of hand as idiots.

Facebook really doesn't want to be in the publishing of ideas business. Their responsibility would be higher.

The air shouldn't have an opinion on the sound traveling through it.

Facebook has the means to manipulate ideas at scale. They have researched it. We are just supposed to blindly trust them because of a vaguely worded Facebook post? A post where to respond, I have to log in and identify myself?

I mean, it's hard to not to see this as Orwellian or just plain stupid. Other than choosing (and then doubling down on) PHP, I don't see Facebook as run by stupid people.

Either they think this thing will just blow over and no one will care. This much trust in something that isn't transparent is just bad for democracy. Facebook isn't the TV station, it's the airwaves. They have to be held to different standards.

There is no law against lying on the news.

Serious question, is there really laws against social media sites or aggregate sites putting a bias in what they choose to display? I'm not sure I see why this argument is valid.

Of existing statute? Probably not. But there could be a push to subject social networks to the Equal Time Rule [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule

It's an open question whether cable networks (like those that carry internet) could be subject to the Equal Time Rule. Publically-licensed airwaves have traditionally been considered fundamentally different from a privately-owned cable system.