Facebook has fired back at a Gizmodo report that claims the social network's employees "routinely suppressed" stories from conservative news outlets in its Trending Topics section.
"We take allegations of bias very seriously," a Facebook spokesperson said, adding that guidelines for its workers "do not permit the suppression of political perspectives."
The rebuttal comes after Gizmodo published a story on Monday claiming that Facebook employees kept stories on conservative politics from right-leaning outlets from appearing in the influential Trending section.
“I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz," a former Facebook worker told Gizmodo.
The report detailed some of the other instructions Facebook gave its workers for managing the Trending section, which is designed to show the most popular stories being shared on Facebook at a given time. For instance, Gizmodo said that Facebook discouraged news stories about itself from appearing in Trending.
Interestingly, Gizmodo's story about Facebook was a Trending topic on Facebook at press time.
Here's Facebook's full statement to Tech Insider, which doesn't explicitly deny Gizmodo's claims that former employees hid news stories based on political bias:
We take allegations of bias very seriously. Facebook is a platform for people and perspectives from across the political spectrum.
Trending Topics shows you the popular topics and hashtags that are being talked about on Facebook. There are rigorous guidelines in place for the review team to ensure consistency and neutrality. These guidelines do not permit the suppression of political perspectives. Nor do they permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over another. These guidelines do not prohibit any news outlet from appearing in Trending Topics.
