Former Facebook employees describe tests of News Feed algorithm changes and their impact on left- and right-leaning news sites, with tweaks to favor the right
even if that change would make the News Feed better.” This report is absolutely damning, with @facebook playing politics through the pushing of certain outlets over others to placate the party in power. https://twitter.com/... @chuckgrassley : To all the journalists who worship freedom of the press (as I do) u should voice ur outrage about the selective censorship from Big Tech like Facebook & Twitter. it violates a constitutional right @jengolbeck : This is an incredible piece of journalism which suggests major legal trouble ahead for Facebook https://www.motherjones.com/ ... Dell Cameron / @dellcam : per Mother Jones, Facebook spox @andymstone refused to comment when asked about a power point presentation reportedly shown executives detailing programmatic changes that would disproportionately boost right-wing sites spreading political disinformation. https://www.motherjones.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Justin Miller / @justinjm1 : Gateway Pundit got special treatment from Facebook https://www.motherjones.com/ ... Pema Levy / @pemalevy : In 2018, Facebook tweaked its code so that pro-Trump news filled users' newsfeeds while progressive news outlets, and @MotherJones in particular, were down-ranked. To appease conservatives, Zuckerberg decided to promote rightwing bs and minimize real news https://www.motherjones.com/ ...
It also fits a pattern of internal research being suppressed or bent to product politics: sources told the Journal that Zuckerberg and others shelved research into Facebook's polarizing effect. Together these accounts suggest the feed's ranking has been treated as a political instrument, not just an engagement optimizer.
First-order effects
Left- and right-leaning news publishers face the immediate implication that their reach was shifted by tests designed to favor one side, making News Feed distribution look like a discretionary political lever rather than a neutral metric.
Facebook itself takes on legal exposure — the report drew immediate reaction including a law professor's warning of major trouble ahead and Senator Grassley framing it as selective censorship violating press freedom.
Second-order effects
If appeasing the party in power buys quiet, every partisan actor learns that pressuring the feed works — deepening exactly the working-the-refs dynamic the Times described across Google and Twitter, not just Facebook.
Rival platforms inherit the accusation by default: once one feed's neutrality is documented as negotiable, advertisers, publishers, and regulators will ask the same questions of every ranking system.
Third-order effects
The structural risk is distribution-layer liability: if insider testimony keeps showing ranking decisions made for political reasons, the platforms' core defense that algorithms are neutral pipes weakens, strengthening the case for regulatory oversight of feed design.
Ex-employee disclosure is becoming the accountability mechanism for black-box systems — 2016's curator accounts, 2020's algorithm-test accounts — meaning each successive insider report raises the cost of keeping feed engineering opaque.
The trend: Platform neutrality claims are eroding as insiders repeatedly document that feed-ranking choices track political pressure rather than neutral engagement goals.
15/ SCOOP: Facebook ran experiments on an algorithm change in Jan 2018 and when it hurt traffic to right-wing opinion sites, they retooled it to shift harm to progressive NEWS sites, @MotherJones among them. And there's a PowerPoint deck out there: https://www.motherjones.com/ ..…
.@ClaraJeffery and I dug into what exactly is behind reports that Facebook tweaked its algorithm to improve results for conservative publishers and make them worse for Mother Jones. And... wow. https://www.motherjones.com/ ...
This story by WaPo's @TonyRomm on regulators taking a hard look at an anti-trust action against Facebook https://twitter.com/... makes me wonder if our story could be lead to a piece of such an investigation... https://www.motherjones.com/ ...
Facebook tweaked its algorithm to prioritize “trusted” and “informative” sources of news but found it killed traffic to right-wing “junk sites.” Former employees said it then changed its algorithm to benefit right-wing sites https://www.motherjones.com/ ...
Conservatives have been very effective at working the refs by accusing the platforms of liberal bias, and while Facebook has been under fire from the left and right, its chief worry was “getting Trump off their back” https://www.motherjones.com/ ...
MoJo on how Facebook deliberately tweaked its algorithm toward “garbage” far-right/conspiracy sites over fact-based, more progressive news, to favor the political will of those running the country. More to come, clearly https://twitter.com/...
Facebook's monopolistic influence on the news is criminal even if it isn't illegal. And tech companies need to be regulated by a Fairness Doctrine applicable to the realities of the 21st-century. https://twitter.com/...
Conservatives have been screaming for years about being shut down by facebook. In reality, Facebook was throttling traffic to liberal websites while Zuckerberg was consciously boosting his dinner buddy Ben Shapiro. https://www.motherjones.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
.@MotherJones reports that there's a Facebook slide deck out there detailing how Mother Jones and other progressive news sites were affected by Facebook's shift to friends and family content in Jan. 2018. https://twitter.com/...
“we can't do a ranking change that would hurt Breitbart—even if that change would make the News Feed better.” This report is absolutely damning, with @facebook playing politics through the pushing of certain outlets over others to placate the party in power. https://twitter.com/.…
To all the journalists who worship freedom of the press (as I do) u should voice ur outrage about the selective censorship from Big Tech like Facebook & Twitter. it violates a constitutional right
per Mother Jones, Facebook spox @andymstone refused to comment when asked about a power point presentation reportedly shown executives detailing programmatic changes that would disproportionately boost right-wing sites spreading political disinformation. https://www.motherjones.c…
In 2018, Facebook tweaked its code so that pro-Trump news filled users' newsfeeds while progressive news outlets, and @MotherJones in particular, were down-ranked. To appease conservatives, Zuckerberg decided to promote rightwing bs and minimize real news https://www.motherjones.…