Facebook Caught Manipulating News and Politics

FEATURING ROBERT JENSEN – Facebook, the world’s most popular social media site with one and a half billion active users has immense power. Now, it has been caught using that power. In an expose in Gizmodo, former Facebook workers revealed that they routinely manipulated news feeds to leave out conservative stories. They also injected stories into news feeds that were not trending and sidelined news about Facebook itself.

Trevor Timm with the media reform group Free Press said, “the extraordinary ability that the social network has to manipulate millions of people with just a tweak to its algorithm is a serious cause for concern.”

Robert Jensen is a Professor of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, and the author of a number of books including “Plain Radical: Living, Loving, and Learning to Leave the Planet Gracefully,” and “Arguing for Our Lives: A User’s Guide to Constructive Dialogue.”

Visit his website at www.robertwjensen.org.