Margaret Sullivan digs in on the wide discrepancy between actual news, news from left leaning sources, and blatant right wing agitprop. No surprise, conservative news outlets are thriving on Facebook due to a combination of working the refs, conspiracy theory peddling, and cultivating relationships with Facebook’s leadership, starting with Zuckerberg. There’s a reason the vast majority of the top stories posted to Facebook are from right wing agitators with zero news value.

I personally never bought into the idea that Zuckerberg or the Newsfeed were politically neutral — algorithms are reflections of the people who build them — but there was a time that Facebook could at least argue they were attempting to remain disengaged from the broader political context of the content they were promoting. After 2016, Facebook had an opportunity to finally take some responsibility for their platform. Instead, they did the easy thing and leaned into the world that Trump had exploited. The result is QAnon, anti-vaxxers, and increased prominence for griefer trolls like Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino.

Update: Brian Feldman, writing over at Motherboard, notes that right-wing conspiracy peddling aligns almost perfectly with Facebook’s incentives.

What does it say about Facebook that common-sense policies—intended to ensure the safety and dignity of all of the site’s users—would, according to its own stress tests, disproportionately impact conservative publishers? If politically-neutral measures intended to reduce harm on Facebook impact right-wing publishers and users more than left-wing ones, is that Facebook’s fault? Or does it point to an overarching alignment between Facebook’s incentives and the style and structure of right-wing media?

Facebook won’t fix the problem of right-wing media on its platform because that is the platform.