Facebook Boosts News Feeds of Top 100 Media Outlets in Secret Political ExperimentEric Blair Mother Jones reports that Facebook has been conducting stealthy political experiments on users, including tweaking the news feeds of almost 2 million users to boost articles shared from the top 100 media outfits. The purpose was to test voter turnout in the 2012 election. As Huffington Post summarizes: That change may have boosted voter turnout by as much as 3 percent, according to a little-known study first disclosed Friday by Mother Jones. For the study, news articles that Facebook users friends had posted appeared higher in their feeds the stream of status updates, photos and articles that show up when you first sign on to the site. The researchers wanted to see whether increasing your exposure to news stories shared by friends before an election would convince you to vote. Facebook said the news stories being shared were general in nature and not political. They came were from a list of 100 top media outlets from the New York Times to Fox News, according to the Mother Jones story, written by Micah Sifry, a democracy activist. Lost in the reporting about this voting experiment is how dangerous it is to only boost establishment news feeds for political outcomes. What if they switch to only boosting GOP or Democrat news feeds? Could they sway elections? We already know they can sway users emotions without their knowledge. As Huffington Post points out: More on this study in the short video below: Illegal or not, these experiments will likely continue in secret. Incidentally, it is well known that Facebook was funded by the CIAs not for profit venture capital firm In-Q-Telleading many to believe its a data collection hub for the U.S. government. Facebook has clearly demonstrated that they dictate what you see in your news feed, not your social media friends. And they intend to continue to manipulate you in secret. Most troubling is that theyre targeting your emotions and political reality. More byEric Blair 