In matters of life and death, how should Facebook decide what you see? - CNET

The biggest social network in the world, Facebook is a key agent of news to the 1.1 billion people who tu to it each day. That news is increasingly user-generated content like Reynolds' and Bautista's streams, as Facebook prioritizes live video in your news feed. But the company lacks the same obligations about editorial transparency as a traditional news outlet.

Whatever was behind the removal and reinstatement of Reynolds' video "those were editorial choices. Whether it was done automatically or manually, it doesn't matter," said Emily Bell, a professor at Columbia's Graduate School of Joualism and the founding director of the Tow Center for Digital Joualism.

"This responsibility was going to be handed to Facebook whether they wanted it or invited it, or not," she said.

Nearly half of adults in the US get news from Facebook, according to a Pew Research Center study conducted this year, and news is growing in significance for Facebook users. In 2013, 47 percent of US Facebook users said they got news on the network; this year, it was 66 percent.

Despite the public's reliance on Facebook for news, people are "deeply confused about whether algorithmic ordering or human systems are bringing up what they see," Bell said.

Openness

That confusion erupted in controversy in May. Workers on Facebook's influential "Trending Topics" section were reportedly instructed to have bias against conservative publications. It shattered a presumption that the listing was a purely data-driven ranking, and Facebook's opaque policies around Trending Topics -- holding workers there under nondisclosure agreements, for example -- raised suspicion among some that the company had something to hide.

"If they're really going to start having more news, they're going to be faced with the question about whether they need to have a more editorial role," said Karen North, a professor at the University of Southe Califoia's Annenberg joualism school and the director of its digital social media program.

Snapchat, for example, has a news division, headed by a former CNN political reporter, to curate users' posts into "Live Story" collections focused on a news event like presidential campaign coverage or the Orlando mass shooting. Facebook doesn't have a comparable arm in place, she noted.

In messages to CNET, Facebook declined to elaborate on what kind of glitch removed Reynolds' video. A spokeswoman pointed to the company's community standards about graphic and violent content when asked how it exerts editorial judgment. She said the company doesn't proactively monitor for violating posts, but rather relies on users to flag content, which is reviewed by a Facebook worker trained on the company's policies. The worker makes the decision to add the waing screen if the post is graphic but otherwise adheres to Facebook's standards.

Those guidelines indicate Facebook takes responsibility for judging the social value of disturbing content. "We remove graphic images when they are shared for sadistic pleasure or to celebrate or glorify violence," the rules state. Without explicitly protecting content that serves a public interest, the guidelines define Facebook as a place to share experiences and raise awareness, and note that depictions of violence, such as human rights abuses or acts of terrorism, can be shared as a means of condemning them.

The arrival of live video on social media platforms echoes the change in TV news in the 1960s, when Americans at their kitchen tables first began seeing vivid footage of soldiers fighting in Vietnam and riots on the streets at home. As graphic and disturbing as this week's videos may be, they depict the violent reality of the racial tension in this country today. On Facebook, they do so to an audience of unprecedented size.