Dozens of articles are trying to blame the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States on Facebook’s news feed algorithm, and especially its supposed propensity for factually untrue news stories. The liberal/left-wing The Intercept just posted an article Facebook, I’m Begging You, Please Make Yourself Better by Sam Biddle promoting this theory. Similar articles have shown up in the LA Times , New York Magazine, and many other sources.
Donald Trump
The premise of these articles is that Facebook created a filter or bubble around dumb, poorly educated, right wing pro-Trump voters bombarding them with factually incorrect news stories and conspiracy theories that convinced these idiots to vote for Trump instead of the saintly, flawless Hillary Clinton. I am being intentionally sarcastic here to make a point.
Hillary Clinton
Less sarcastically, the premise is that the news feed algorithms select articles that the Facebook users want to read, confirming either conservative or liberal biases depending on the user and failing to check for factual accuracy and also assuming the Facebook users don’t fact check the articles Facebook pushes at them in this era of Google and other search engines.
There is also an assumption here that Donald Trump will be a terrible President. We don’t actually know that but it is a widespread concern that I share.
Did Facebook’s News Feed Algorithm Elect Donald Trump?
This is probably the first Presidential Election in history where the outcome is being blamed on algorithms, in particular the news feed selection algorithms of Facebook.
Speaking for myself I was bombarded by Facebook news articles highly supportive of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats and clearly whitewashing the scandals that were inflicting serious damage on her campaign. From my own experience, I saw no evidence of the Facebook filter/bubble theory — more the Facebook likes Hillary and the Democrats theory.
The idea that conservative, right-wing Americans trust Facebook, a company with close visible ties to the Obama administration, and its news feed should seem laughable in the extreme. Facebook, of course, advocates for immigration policies denounced by Donald Trump as well.
Hillary Clinton was severely damaged by factually correct or largely factually correct news articles in The Intercept (yes) in articles such as “Why Did the Saudi Regime and Other Gulf Tyrannies Donate Millions to the Clinton Foundation”, The New York Times in articles such as “Cash Flowed to the Clinton Foundation Amidst Russian Uranium Deal”, and many other non-Facebook news and media sources documenting conflicts of interest involving the Clinton Foundation, her husband former President Bill Clinton, and the former Senator and US Secretary of State herself.
These troubling conflicts of interest and many questions about them were documented in right wing activist Peter Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich available on Amazon (not Facebook). They were also discussed in Schweizer’s video Clinton Cash available on YouTube (not Facebook).
The problem with these stories is not that they were false. They are largely true — factually correct. The Russian uranium deal which gave the Russian nuclear agency Rosatom and by extension the Russian government of Vladimir Putin control of many uranium mines throughout the world and even in the United States is particularly troubling. Uranium is the most powerful explosive in the world and the basis of the huge arsenals of nuclear weapons possessed by both the United States and Russia. Uranium-238, the main isotope of uranium, can be converted easily in a breeder reactor to Plutonium-239, the highly explosive and highly toxic isotope of Plutonium that forms the core of most nuclear weapons. At best, this was poor judgment on the part of the Clintons. At worst, it raises the possibility that the Clintons have been compromised by Russian intelligence.
For what it is worth given that polls have proven unreliable in this election, polls consistently showed record disapproval ratings for both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump among voters. I certainly know many people who were appalled at the choice, wanting neither candidate.
Voting for the Lesser Evil
Millions of Americans were forced to choose between an erratic businessman with no government experience and murky business connections on the one hand and a former Secretary of State who appeared to have been selling her official services to the highest bidder, even including the most formidable and heavily armed potential adversary of the United States, that is Russia with its vast nuclear arsenal.
In saying this, I am not advocating a return to the Cold War nor mindless confrontation with Russia, the other major nuclear power in the world. But helping Russia gain control of sizable reserves of uranium, the most powerful explosive in the world, was not wise.
Many Americans have voted for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump with great reserve and concerns about the candidate that they voted for. Not because they are racists or dumb or poorly educated. Not because they are closet socialists or naive idealistic internationalists. They had to choose between two lousy candidates. That is the reality that should be fixed.
The only other choice was to vote for fringe third party candidates such as the Libertarians or the Green Party, knowing that they would not win and that such a vote would be equivalent to voting for whichever candidate, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, wins in the voter’s state.
Algorithms or Human Judgment?
In recent years with the proliferation of extremely powerful computers and high bandwidth networks, algorithms have become the scapegoat for decisions by people, not infrequently powerful people who want to avoid accountability. People make decisions, not algorithms. People choose and design the algorithms. People choose and design the mathematical models. Until we have true Artificial Intelligence (AI), if it ever comes, that will be true.
The problem here is not with Facebook’s algorithms or anybody else’s algorithms. It is with a political and economic system that is putting forward such dubious candidates for the highest office in the United States.
© 2016 John F. McGowan
About the Author
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He can be reached at jmcgowan11@earthlink.net.
I received some complaints that this is largely a personal opinion piece without evidence to back up my attribution of Hillary Clinton’s problems to the Clinton Foundation scandals rather than fake/factually incorrect news articles allegedly promoted by Facebook.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/21/the-clinton-foundation-has-become-a-clear-liability-as-bill-clinton-mounts-his-big-defense/
An ABC/Washington Post poll in September showed that 6 in 10 thought special favors had been done for Clinton Foundation donors.
This shows public was well aware of the issue.
An article in The Guardian from about an hour ago (4PM Pacific Standard Time, November 10, 2016) also blaming “fake news” and “conspiracy theories” on Facebook:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/10/facebook-fake-news-election-conspiracy-theories
An article in Fortune from earlier today (November 10, 2016) partially blaming Facebook:
https://fortune.com/2016/11/10/facebook-blame-trump/
This is a Tech Crunch article from earlier today (Nov. 10, 2016) with a similar theme:
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/10/facebook-admits-it-must-do-more-to-stop-the-spread-of-misinformation-on-its-platform/
The Huffington Post partly blames Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook for Donald Trump (Nov 10, 2016)
Hey, Mark Zuckerberg, Trump’s Rise Is Partly On You
Facebook helped spread lies and stoke emotion on both sides during the election. It needs to reckon with that.
Emily Peck, Executive Editor, Business and Technology, The Huffington Post
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/facebook-donald-trump-election_us_5824e18ee4b0ddd4fe797972
Mashable opinion piece by Damon Beres blaming Facebook:
Facebook failed America this year — Now it should kill the News Feed
https://mashable.com/2016/11/09/facebook-kill-news-feed-trump/#42HO0T7f.mql
Another TechCrunch article from November 9, 2016 repeating the same talking points as most of the other “blame Facebook” articles:
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/09/rigged/
Mark Zuckerberg responds (BBC News, about 2 hours ago, 10PM PST, Nov. 10, 2016):
‘Crazy’ to say Facebook helped Trump win – Zuckerberg
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37946713
Exit Poll results reported by New York Times for 2016
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html
It is not clear from the article if these are raw numbers or weighted or adjusted in some way as was done in the many polls predicting a Clinton win.
Arguably this gives some hard data on the sentiments of the actual voters in the 2016 election, rather than speculating on their thoughts. There does not appear to be a question directly on the influence of Facebook posts on their decisions. 🙂
These are the BuzzFeed articles on Facebook “fake news” referenced in most of the articles blaming Trump on the Facebook News Feed Algorithms:
Hyperpartisan Facebook Pages Are Publishing False And Misleading Information At An Alarming Rate (October 26, 2016)
https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/partisan-fb-pages-analysis?utm_term=.yt4YYKqQZw#.whgrrl2BqY
How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News
BuzzFeed News identified more than 100 pro-Trump websites being run from a single town in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. (November 3, 2016)
https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became-a-global-hub-for-pro-trump-misinfo?utm_term=.bjK99dKk5e#.neymmP0WOq
This uranium deal would make me wonder about President Obama. Technically, she as Secretary of State, was subordinate to him. Was Obama not paying attention, or was he willfully ignorant? It seems like this is the kind of role which is supposed to fit the CIA; to make sure the President is aware of issues like these. The CIA, as a foreign intelligence agency ,should be able to figure out if foreign governments or powerful people in other countries are trying to co-opt top American government leaders. So, what is interesting is no one asks what Obama knew about this.