Facebook denies Brexit bias in "feelings" feature

Social media giant Facebook has denied a bias in the upcoming EU referendum, after it gave users the ability to report themselves as being “in favour of leaving the EU,” but not in favour of remaining.

Writer and strategist Jon Worth highlighted the feature when he tried to add a “feeling” or “activity” to a Facebook status update.

When he went to the list of “feeling” and “activity” options, the “in favour of leaving” option was offered among others such as “feeling sick” and “having a cuppa”.

The Guardian reported that it replicated Worth’s findings on a user’s account and also found that only the pro-leave option was available on mobile, with neither view being presented on the desktop version of the social network.

“I cannot imagine many people actually use a Feeling/Activity so deeply buried in Facebook’s menus,” Worth told the newspaper.

“But what worries me is that Facebook has added this to its app - and this is a core function, not something user generated - and did not stop to think about the inherent bias shown here.

“Once more it calls into question how neutral privately-owned social networks are when it comes to political debate,” he added.

When investigated by Digital Look on Wednesday afternoon, neither “leave” nor “remain” was available on the desktop version of the site, though some users had reported seeing both options when manually searching for “EU”.

“People who search for ‘EU’ when they are using our status tool will see a full range of options enabling them to add if they are thinking of leaving or remaining in the EU,” Facebook told the Guardian.

“People scrolling through the list of activities see options based on what their friends and other people have been using.”