Facebook executive responds after inclusion of Breitbart, a site known for misinformation, ...

[demmiblue]

New York (CNN Business)The executive overseeing Facebook's recently-unveiled news section appeared to defend the company's controversial decision to include Breitbart, a far-right website known for misinformation, as one of its sources.

Campbell Brown, the head of global news partnerships at Facebook, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday that she believed when "building out a destination for news on Facebook" content "from ideological publishers on both the left and right" should be included.

Facebook unveiled its news section, which has been in the works for months, last Friday. When Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg first announced in April the company was creating a section for news, he said it would be devoted to curating "high quality" information from "trustworthy" sources.

But Facebook said on Friday that the news section would include Breitbart.

In her Wednesday post, Brown did not identify Breitbart by name, but its inclusion in the news tab marketed as a place for "high quality" information from "trustworthy" sources has sparked uproar.

Breitbart, previously headed by former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, has published incendiary commentary.

The website also has a long history of publishing brazenly misleading stories about Democrats and critics of President Trump.

Brown, however, suggested that despite such a history, Breitbart has met Facebook's "integrity standards for misinformation."

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/30/media/facebook-news-breitbart/index.html

Link to tweet

[Lochloosa]

1. "integrity standards for misinformation." 1984

[blugbox]

13. UGH thank you!!

That stood out to me immediately!

Either they have no idea how bad that sounds, or they know exactly how that sounds. I'm still not sure which is worse.

[CincyDem]

2. That it meets FB standards for integrity says more about FB that BB.

We know what BB is. And FB is fine with that.

I guess we should never forget that Zuck started his thing by stealing pics of female students from the college registrar offices do male students could rate them as “hot or not”.

That’s who Zuck is.

[PJMcK]

3. She's a Republican blowhard

Brown used to be a TV newsperson who skewed rightwards. She's married to Dan Senor, a former advisor to Romney.

Yeah, she's got America's best interests at heart.

[Dennis Donovan]

6. Oops! I had her married to Ari Fleischer...

I guess they're interchangeable.

[Dennis Donovan]

4. Campbell Brown is married to Dan Senor...

...just a reminder.

[MagickMuffin]

5. Wrong, she is married to Dan Senor

But they are all vomit inducing "republicons"

[Dennis Donovan]

7. ...already changed it n/t

[spanone]

8. There is NO defense of brietbart. ZERO.

[gratuitous]

9. So, Ms. Brown, tell us

What do you consider to be the ideological publisher equivalent to Breitbart ("Behave yourself! Erk!" *Plotz*) on the left?

[brush]

10. To paraphrase Maya Angelo, "when a company shows you who they are, believe them."

Facebook and Zuckerberg are right-leaning trumpists who let Cambridge Analytica use his platform in 2016 to help elect trump and are now allowing liar political ads favoring trump to run now. It's pretty obvious that getting the money for the ads is what counts, not the truth.

[Backseat Driver]

11. On desktop - where is this "news tab" on FB???

[DetlefK]

12. Facebook is nothing but a data-mining operation: They sell your private info to advertisers.

When the Cambridge Analytica scandal came out, it was revealed that Facebook had given so many corporations access to its user-data that Facebook HAD LOST TRACK what they were giving to whom. Some corporations were allowed to scoop up more info than specified in their contract with Facebook. Some were allowed to scoop up info after their contract with Facebook had already run out.

[Maven]

14. Facebook is the perfect social manipulation tool for right-wing tyrants

Not only do they provide a means to target personalized disinformation directly at individual users, they are now mainstreaming propaganda and conspiracy theories as news.

Facebook is malware.

[sinkingfeeling]

15. Why would anybody seek "news" on Fakebook?