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Facebook and the Rise of Conservative Grievance Politics
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook.
When conservatives criticized Facebook for spiking right-leaning content, CEO Mark Zuckerberg did something odd for a liberal tech titan: he listened. The kajillionaire invited several leading conservative voices to fly out to the left coast and share their concerns in person. Despite Zuckerberg’s sickening oversight of not inviting yours truly, I was impressed that he was savvy enough to call a summit.
Sure, his motivation was probably more PR and business development than the robust exchange of ideas, but you don’t see the New York Times or NBC News reacting this way to a couple days of snarky blog posts about media bias. Do I think Facebook will shed its liberal worldview and use Trending Topics to promote “Trump Correctly Accuses Bill Clinton of Rape” above “Lena Dunham Inspires Millions by Eating Lasagna Naked?” Of course not. Facebook is a progressive company staffed by progressive professionals who swim in a progressive ecosystem. But by starting a dialogue with conservatives, he might tip off his staff that half of the company’s users don’t enthusiastically support Hillary or Bernie.
Glenn Beck (who, unlike yours truly, was actually invited to the confab) came away disappointed. Not with Facebook management, but by the behavior of his conservative confreres.
I sat through a meeting that, to me, felt like I was attending a Rainbow Coalition meeting, that people (not me) had come with a list of demands.
I looked around the room, I heard the complaints, I listened to the perspectives, and not a single person in the room shared evidence of any wrongdoing. Maybe they had some, but it wasn’t shared. They discussed how Facebook’s organic reach and changes in algorithms has impacted their business. While at the same time admitting that Huffington Post has been struggling with the same issues. I heard people discuss community standards, pages being shut down, posts being removed — and I do believe that happens and it’s something Facebook could do better, and I hope they will — but we were not there because of that. We were there because of this ONE accusation on Trending Topics.
I sat there looking around and heard things like:
- Facebook has a very liberal workforce. Has Facebook considered diversity in their hiring practice? The country is 2% Mormon. Maybe Facebook’s company should better reflect that reality.
- Maybe Facebook should consider a six-month training program to help their biased and liberal workforce understand and respect conservative opinions and values.
- We need to see strong and specific steps to right this wrong.
It was like affirmative action for conservatives. When did conservatives start demanding quotas AND diversity training AND less people from Ivy League Colleges?
Erick Erickson (who, unlike yours truly, was actually invited to the confab, but, like yours truly, did not attend said confab) had feelings similar to those of Beck:
I know most of those who went to the meeting. I know what was said at the meeting. I also know those who were invited and refused to go. One conservative organization invited to the meeting refused to go because, among other reasons, Facebook had refused to give money for an event held by that group.
Still other conservatives who did go to the meeting insisted Facebook should hire conservatives. They insisted Facebook should steer money toward conservative causes and candidates and join conservative fights. All those things may sound well and good, but when did the conservative movement decide to behave like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? Both those men are portrayed by the right as shakedown artists and here come a group of conservatives shaking down Facebook.
It seems a growing number of conservatives decided they must embrace the same tactics of the left and turn into professional grievance mongers and shake down artists. Just as Republicans fail to win elections by being Democrat-lite, conservatives are never going to beat liberals at their own game.
Ben Domenech of The Federalist did not like these critiques at all. He lit in to both conservative commentators with an intensity usually reserved for Vladimir Putin or the New England Patriots:
These are the complaints of useful idiots. They are stupid and both men should be ashamed at their dull-witted retromingency in making them. Facebook is not being shaken down in any capacity. It is being criticized not as a corporation, but in its chosen role as a media entity. Facebook curates the news; it is a news source for the vast majority of Americans. It put its trending algorithm forward as a source of news, with the false impression given that it accurately represented the trending topics of the Facebook community. Instead, it warped these results according to their ideological framework and their biases to falsely represent the top stories of the day. This is a serious accusation and one Facebook has admitted to as a problem. Yet Beck and Erickson are arguing against Mark Zuckerberg when they say that it doesn’t matter.
Glenn Beck walked into a room with them and loudly insisted he was uninterested in influencing their hiring decisions which leave out conservatives, because he wanted to out-conservative everyone in the room.
If you agree with Beck and Erickson, you must also throw out the entire realm of media bias reporting that has been a mark of the right for decades as nothing….
If they really believe this and aren’t just posturing, then Beck and Erickson can go to their rooms to play their hit song “Alone in My Principles” and leave the media criticism fray to those of us who believe it is important and valuable, and have the spine to do it.
After looking up the word “retromingency,” I want to know where our readers stand. Are too many conservatives buying into the odious grievance politics of the left or should we redouble our complaints about bias to force our way into the media conversation?
Published in Culture
Folks have plenty of places to read liberal propaganda so I couldn’t care less what Facebook does. In the meantime, this unnecessary uproar is affecting the stock and that does bother me.
Learn something new every day.
On the FB trending, there are icons to select different topics of trending. Here is my politics trending feed. As I understand it, the trending on your FB is connected to your profile. My profile is quite restricted, with nothing public to view.
I don’t think I’ll use FB as a news source, but it is nice to know I can filter out the mass trending topics, down to more streamlined topics.
I wonder how my “like” of Carly Fiorina affects my political trending list? And if they track the posts I hide, that might actually be a better read of my interests. I hide every overtly leftist post that comes across my feed. I only leave innocuous things, and family posts to be seen.
I had to laugh, in the science topic, there was a trending story about a man who adopted a horse that was shot by paintball bullets.
Oh, brother.
And for those who don’t use FB, this was what Zuckerberg posted on FB:
With all due respect Jules, Markie Z needs to stay out of politics; he is a genius and started a magnificent company with awfully impressive quarterly earnings. I’d take a wild (and paranoid) bet this is a ridiculous plot to force him to take his eye off the ball- inventing technology and making lot and lots of money for himself, his employees, and his stockholders.
Edit for further comment: I felt similarly suspicious when his old and less than innovative competitors Gates and Buffett tried to get him to focus on charity to the tune of 22 billion dollars when any businessperson knows a man that young should be focused upon re-investing in his company first and foremost.
I agree Markie Z should stay out of politics, but isn’t it possible an even handed discussion and response to the topic and function of “trending” stories helps the FB bottom line–and subsequently the bottom line of the shareholders?
If the FB goal is to have maximum membership, human targets who are part of the overall marketing scheme, then it would make sense that he doesn’t alienate portions of potential markets.
I don’t want to be Markie’s friend, but his product helps me easily connect to my family and friends, most of whom live far away. I’m not very responsive to the marketing aspects of FB, but I’m guessing FB gleans enough data from my activity to make me worth having as a “client.”
For me, FB is like a postcard, or a post-it, not a news source. I don’t like to get notes that say, “I think you are stupid, and hateful, so just shut up.”
When Markie Z’s employees do just that by manipulating trends according to their bias, the employees may be hurting his bottom line by squashing dialogue and alienating potential clients with valuable data to be gleaned.
I think that is what is happening with this kerfuffle, and I hope it helps even out the stock losses, and turn them into gains.
The majority of Z followers (you and others here on Ricochet are certainly the exceptions) most likely endorse his politics. Again, I’m fine with that and you are right about the stock rebound. It started to happen on Friday; it just annoyed me to be upset about it for 24 hours.
Stay Calm and Chix PIT on ET.
xxoo