Facebook’s Influence in the Presidential Election

More than a billion people log onto Facebook every day to look at cat gifs and baby pictures; and now more than ever, people are getting their news from the social networking site. That news is controlled by Facebook’s powerful news feed algorithm, but there are also humans involved. Gizmodo reported Monday that, according to a former Facebook contractor, curators of Facebook’s trending news feature routinely suppressed conservative news stories. Facebook has denied the allegations, but a Senate committee is looking into the matter. Regardless of whether the allegations are true or not, Facebook is clearly having an effect on this election.