Facebook's Legal Anonymity Causing Problems After Trending Controversy

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Last week an uproar was caused when Gizmodo reported that Facebook was censoring certain news sites by telling their staff to ignore their stories until they were on a more mainstream news site. Facebook have denied this, but at the moment, they're having a lot of trouble getting people to believe them. This is because a lot of different news services are releasing contradictory stories and Facebook are refusing to let Trending Editors past or present say anything which could clear this all.

The problem with this sort of controversy is that to really end it, you need someone who isn't high up to point out what is really happening. Facebook aren't allowing staff to discuss this and that isn't helping with all the controversy. When something like this happens all the staff need to band together to prove that what is being said hasn't happened and isn't happening. If anything it now looks like Facebook have something to hide. What other reason do they have to hold their staff to these agreements? It seems kind of pointless and really this controversy could be over and done with quite quickly.

This story is one that should have been finished with. None of these other issues raised by the conservative media have lasted for long except for this one. Facebook are already in court for other unrelated issues and they don't need trouble to be kicked up elsewhere. If they want things to end soon, then they need to do something to make sure that the same story is being reported everywhere and that it's accurate so that no one can argue with them.

The most irritating thing about this all is that some of Facebook's staff have already commented, they just can't put their name to the statements. What that does is make you wonder is if a member of staff has really said that or if it's fake. A name and knowing where they work now and what they do could make the statement more powerful as people will then be able to look into the person and decide whether what they're saying is reliable or not.

This story isn't going to end anytime soon as Facebook can be very big on privacy. In this case, this is likely going to get them in more trouble than they might have if they allowed their staff to actually talk about this.

Rosina Brooker

Rosina is a Songbird writer with a degree in Creative Writing. She's trying to focus on her novel on the side but is glad to be playing around with apps and writing about them in the mean time! Follow her @Songbird_Rosina

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