This article criticizes Facebook for firing the human editors that had been keeping things sane. However they were pushed to that by accusations of bias in the right-wing media. Accusations that looked likely to lead to a Congressional investigation.
Now they are in a situation where they are damned if they do, damned if they don't. And people immersed in echo chambers will accuse them of bias no matter what.
But the entire system is fundamentally broken. Pay per ad incentives lead to rewarding viral content. And content that induces outrage is far more likely to go viral than pretty much anything else. Plus it goes viral before people do pesky things like fact checks. And the more of this that you have been exposed to, the more reasonable you find outrageous claims. Even if you know that the ones that you have seen were all wrong.
For an in depth treatment of the underlying issues, I highly recommend Trust Me, I'm Lying.
See, for example, http://thehill.com/policy/technology/279361-top-republican-d....
Now they are in a situation where they are damned if they do, damned if they don't. And people immersed in echo chambers will accuse them of bias no matter what.
But the entire system is fundamentally broken. Pay per ad incentives lead to rewarding viral content. And content that induces outrage is far more likely to go viral than pretty much anything else. Plus it goes viral before people do pesky things like fact checks. And the more of this that you have been exposed to, the more reasonable you find outrageous claims. Even if you know that the ones that you have seen were all wrong.
For an in depth treatment of the underlying issues, I highly recommend Trust Me, I'm Lying.