A senator’s Facebook faceoff

We have a new convergence. The Senate Commerce Committee chairman says he “wants answers” about Facebook.  A story on Gizmodo claims story and trend curators on Facebook were told to suppress stories featuring conservatives or conservative viewpoints.

To tell you the truth, I hadn’t thought of Facebook as a news source, unless “news” consists of people you barely know working ceaselessly to assure you of their superior wealth, discerning taste, or flawless families. I always feel depressed at my own drab life after seeing the litany of new cars, exotic vacations, Disney-esque moments with loved ones, exquisite pets, and endless joy. I check my feed every couple of months and in recent times I’ve found Facebook to be mostly what all websites ultimately are — an advertising medium. There’s an old axiom stating that pornography would be the killer online app. Perhaps so, but only it if comes with pop-up ads and promoted content.

Facebook aside, the multiplicity of millennial sites has rendered the news business something of a madhouse. Sites like Gizmodo and Buzzfeed may have some architecture to how they present what they present, but their weird mishmash of juxtaposed multimedia stories remind me of 19th century newspapers — big, wide sheets covered with dozens of stories placed according to how the printer could fit them in.

Food, movies, politics, technology gadgets, bizarre cultural phenomena, celebrities, sex (which is becoming a bizarre cultural phenomenon) — they’re all presented in an endless river of oddness on these sites. A sort of kaleidoscope of the weird. I love them. They all have their political biases. I check them all regularly, left or right, in spite of their obvious proclivities.

If I want to see what the left is thinking, I read Salon or the New York Times. For the  right, there’s the Wall Street Journal editorial page or sites like The Blaze and the Drudge Report, the master painting a picture simply by aggregating links from many sources.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the committee chair, is asking Facebook to answer a lot of questions, such as:

• “Please describe Facebook’s organizational structure for the Trending Topics feature, and the steps for determining included topics.”
• “Who is ultimately responsible for approving its content?”
• “What steps is Facebook taking to investigate claims of politically motivated manipulation of news stories in the Trending Topics section?”

He also wants timelines and copies of guidelines.

To be sure, there’s plenty of reason to distrust what Facebook serves up as news and trends. Its T-shirted founder is predictable in his political leanings. You could consider Facebook and everything in it as so much nonsense, except for the fact that about half of Americans have a Facebook account and the company is in fact a new model for a news organization. This story from The Atlantic takes an exhaustive view of Facebook-as-news-media, reporting the company sucks up 30 percent of all display advertising dollars worldwide.

Still, I just wonder if this is really the best use of senatorial time, or if the Commerce Committee even has any jurisdiction over this sort of thing. Maybe federal agencies with Facebook accounts will want to review their activities. But let’s not worry too much about the power of Facebook. The internet moves fast and ruthlessly. Just ask MySpace.

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