Can We Trust Facebook to Be Fair with Conservative News?

Quick to Listen

Christianity Today

Religion & Spirituality, Religion, Christianity

4.3 • 622 Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2016

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you’re on Facebook, you’ve probably glanced at--and maybe clicked into--the trending headlines on your timeline. Maybe you thought these stories were generated by an algorithm. You’d be wrong. Instead, Facebook employed a team of people who selected these stories, with a bit of influence from management. Higher-ups repeatedly instructed the team to keep “stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site’s users,” reported Gizmodo, which broke the story. “Facebook’s bottom line and their shareholders’ best interests are Facebook’s best interests,” said our guest Adam Graber, who writes about technology and the church. “Facebook wants to keep you on their site and keep you clicking. If they can keep a trending topics bar to help you do that, they’re going do that. Yes, they’re looking to keep their users happy but their users aren’t necessarily the ones driving the value of their site.” Graber joined Morgan and guest co-host Ted Olsen to discuss why we value neutrality, how algorithms can both benefit our lives and warp our realities, and whether there’s overlap in CT’s own practices and those of its trending curators. (3:09) What is an algorithm? (5:25) What makes Facebook’s actions so distressing? (12:27) Given previous decisions, can and should Facebook, as a content distributor and business, actually be neutral? (20:26) How can we consume content and order information in ways that are inherently more or less Christian? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you in part by The Apologetics Guy Show, the podcast that helps you find clear answers to tough questions about Christianity.
0:11.0	Learn to explain your faith with courage and compassion.
0:14.5	Join Moody Bible Institute professor Dr. Mikhail del Rosario at apologeticsky.com.
0:20.6	Thank you. Michael Del Rosario at Apologeticsguy.com.
0:31.3	You are listening to Quick to Listen, and this is Morgan Lee.
0:40.6	I'm an assistant editor at Christianity today, and today I am joined by a special co-host, Ted Olson, CT Senior Editor.
0:41.3	Ted!
0:41.8	Hey!
0:45.5	Hey, yeah, Caitlin's away this week, so I am here instead.
0:52.4	So yeah, I'm senior editor at Christianity Today and editor of a sister publication called The Behemoth.
0:56.8	And our other guest is Adam Graber, who I met years ago at a conference called Bible Tech. And he's been writing about technology in the church for years
1:02.4	since about 2009. He's been on the social media church podcast. He's been in the New York Times.
1:08.4	He wrote a great article for Leadership Journal on how
1:11.2	cars created the megachurch. And I interviewed him for my hacking the Bible cover story years ago.
1:19.5	Thrilled to have him here. Hey, Adam. Hi, Ted. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me,
1:23.4	guys. Thanks for joining us. We are thrilled to have you too. Ted, as you know, through listening to our
1:28.9	podcast, guys, Ted has been like a big fan, but also really a good coach through all of us.
1:34.4	I heard it before any of you. It's true. Even the ones that never came out. Anyway, so everything
1:40.9	that we cover on Quick to Listen is a controversy and controversies obviously are complex and they're contentious.
1:47.8	And we spend each Quick to Listen episode trying to acknowledge the tensions and then work them out best and see how we as Christians can respond to them.
1:57.8	Ted, what is the story this week?
1:59.1	Yeah, so we thought we'd look at Facebook not using
	...

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