It's a weird coincidence that this obvious misreading is politically very useful for managing Facebook's position as a vast unregulated media business
If you want to be left alone by politicians at a time when no publications doing consistently good journalism are full-throated supporters of the current administration, *balance* on a left/right axis rather than using good quality/poor quality helps keep critics off your back.
This isn't so different to how US newspapers developed the whole "balance" thing in the 20th century, as the winners of the yellow journalism era of partisan writing found themselves inheriting profitable metro media monopolies and sought a way to keep City Hall off their backs.
There was never a "balance" thing in British newspapers because there were always nearly a dozen national papers so no monopolies. Whereas British broadcast adopted the balance standard because airwaves are public infrastructure licensed by the government.
