A former Facebook contractor has disclosed he witnessed colleagues suppress news about popular conservative topics from the website's trending section.

The allegation by the anonymous contractor ignited a debate over whether Facebook and other social media companies are prioritising liberal viewpoints in their trending topics.
Facebook refutes the allegations, noting that it is bias and not to be taken seriously.

According to the company statement, “What the former worker is describing, if it happened, would have violated the company’s ‘trending’ guidelines.

“These guidelines do not permit the suppression of political perspectives nor do they permit the prioritisation of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over another.”

The head of the Facebook team responsible for trending topics, Tom Stocky, mentioned in a separate post that he has found no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true.

“But the bottom line is that humans, unlike algorithms, have hearts. And the company can’t know for sure what was in the hearts of the workers who were selecting certain stories while rejecting others,” Stocky explains.

Some website operators are elated about the Gizmodo report; this is evident as the allegation is currently trending on Facebook.

The anonymous contractor discloses a long-held view among some prominent conservatives that Facebook (FB, Tech30), Twitter (TWTR, Tech30) and other technology companies are infected by liberal bias.

According to the co-founder of the conservative web site The Federalist, Sean Davis, who tweeted about the alleged suppression, he writes, “We've all experienced it.”

Three former Facebook workers who spoke with newsmen resonated what some of Gizmodo’s other sources said that personal biases might creep into the day-to-day ‘trending’ work, but they never detected institutional bias for or against conservative information.

One of the sources reiterated, “On the contrary, the guidance from management was that it should be objectively representing what people are talking about, regardless of political views.”

Another source, a former trending topic curator, said the teams prized transparency and open communication. While some stories that were trending across Facebook were blocked from appearing in the box, the intent was to weed out spam and other objectionable content.

“Blacklisted topics had to be logged by the team along with reasons. They were also checked. We were also very open with each other about the content we edited,” the source added.

A third source said, “No one ever told me to suppress a conservative story.”

However, the issue here is whether Facebook’s guidelines were violated by former contractors and whether they’re still being violated today.

The editor-in-chief and publisher of MIT Technology review, Jason Pontin said Monday’s report came amid a period of widespread paranoia amongst conservatives and Trump supporters that mainstream media, social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, and other elite institutions are routinely shadow blocking conservative opinions.