title:  Facebook Hits Back, Responds To Allegations They’re Hiding Conservative Opinions
text: There have recently been allegations claiming that Facebook is purposefully keeping conservative news and topics out of the  trending  news section of their website. However, Facebook has released this statement in response: 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. According to an article put out by Gizmodo, it was claimed that  news curators  for Facebook would purposefully pick and choose which topics should be put into trending. And while sure, depending on who is curating the news at any given moment their may be some underlying bias, it appears Facebook s algorithms do not allow such bias to rule the roost. In fact, according to Facebook s VP of search, Tom Stocky, it s  not feasible  and if guidelines are violated it is a  fireable offense. Here s the full statement by Stocky: My team is responsible for Trending Topics, and I want to address today s reports alleging that Facebook contractors manipulated Trending Topics to suppress stories of interest to conservatives. We take these reports extremely seriously, and have found no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true.Facebook is a platform for people and perspectives from across the political spectrum. 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.Trending Topics is designed to showcase the current conversation happening on Facebook. Popular topics are first surfaced by an algorithm, then audited by review team members to confirm that the topics are in fact trending news in the real world and not, for example, similar-sounding topics or misnomers.We are proud that, in 2015, the US election was the most talked-about subject on Facebook, and we want to encourage that robust political discussion from all sides. We have in place strict guidelines for our trending topic reviewers as they audit topics surfaced algorithmically: reviewers are required to accept topics that reflect real world events, and are instructed to disregard junk or duplicate topics, hoaxes, or subjects with insufficient sources. Facebook does not allow or advise our reviewers to systematically discriminate against sources of any ideological origin and we ve designed our tools to make that technically not feasible. At the same time, our reviewers  actions are logged and reviewed, and violating our guidelines is a fireable offense.There have been other anonymous allegations   for instance that we artificially forced  # BlackLivesMatter  to trend. We looked into that charge and found that it is untrue. We do not insert stories artificially into trending topics, and do not instruct our reviewers to do so. Our guidelines do permit reviewers to take steps to make topics more coherent, such as combining related topics into a single event (such as  # starwars  and # maythefourthbewithyou ), to deliver a more integrated experience.Our review guidelines for Trending Topics are under constant review, and we will continue to look for improvements. We will also keep looking into any questions about Trending Topics to ensure that people are matched with the stories that are predicted to be the most interesting to them, and to be sure that our methods are as neutral and effective as possible. Many have been bringing up the fact that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a liberal, so he may purposefully promote liberal content and trending topics. Now, while the company claims this isn t true, what s to honestly keep them from doing this anyway. The irony in all of this is that conservatives are for freedom within a capitalist society and if a company were to operate in a way that they see fit, that is their freedom. They are not bound to not be biased except for their own rules they put in place. With that being said, Facebook is adamantly denying the claims that they are being biased, and maybe, just maybe, liberal opinions are the more popular opinions and thus trend more often. Ever think of that?Featured Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images