From Daily Caller
Silicon Valley and the larger tech industry are consistently accused of political censorship, and platforms and services often seem to be showing it.
Facebook employees in control of the social network’s trending news section allegedly suppressed stories more likely to be interesting to conservative readers, which subsequently bumped positive liberal stories up higher, according to Gizmodo. This fueled an already blazing fire, since these allegations corroborated what many conservative pundits and news outlets suspected for some time.
“We take allegations of bias very seriously,” an official Facebook representative told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Facebook is a platform for people and perspectives across the political spectrum.” They added that they have meticulous rules for their review team.
Facebook later announced that it will train its employees to detect for any political leanings, according to The Wall Street Journal. COO Sheryl Sandberg said it’s planning on adding a section of “political bias” to its bias management classes, which some employees enroll in.
Google excluded Republican nominee Donald Trump from a list of active presidential campaigns on its search engine. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who had already endorsed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton publicly at the time, was listed as an active candidate. Former Gov. Gary Johnson was polling around 13 percent at the time, but was also omitted. The only three candidates featured for the search query were Clinton, Sanders and Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
Google blamed it on a “technical bug.”
Google has been in hot water before for alleged practices of partiality. A viral video circulated in June that claimed Google has been actively altering search recommendations in favor of Clinton and her campaign.
“If this is true, it is a disgrace that Google would do that,” Trump said. That would be “very, very dishonest,” he continued, according to Business Insider.YouTube users in recent weeks have become outraged over claims their content is being unfairly purged. The video sharing company has been alerting owners of video pages that their videos are eliciting advertiser complaints, the Chicago Tribune reports. Famous video bloggers and web personalities like Luke Cutforth, Rob Dyke, Melanie Murphy, MrRepzion and Philip DeFranco have all used YouTube and Twitter to express their indignation over YouTube’s censorship.
DeFranco’s video titled, “YouTube Is Shutting Down My Channel and I’m Not Sure What To Do,” has more than five million views as of Wednesday afternoon.
YouTube lists a number of guidelines for what it considered inappropriate for advertising. “Controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown,” reads YouTube’s help page.
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