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Zuckerberg’s Conservative Battle
Mark Zuckerberg and his massive social-media site Facebook have come under strong criticism for allegedly suppressing stories of interest for conservative readers from its influential “trending” news section. Facebook has roughly 1.6 billion users worldwide, of whom 167 million are in the United States. Its “trending” topics is therefore a powerful political influence.
Zuckerberg has denied the charges, and he will meet Wednesday with a handful of conservatives to discuss allegations that Facebook’s “news curators” have manipulated its list of stories. The way it works at Facebook is that this powerful group of curators, or editors, who have access to a ranked list of trending topics generated by the company’s algorithms, control the content of the trending-news section. In effect, these curators exercise gatekeeping powers which amount to political news-making powers that are transmitted to Facebook’s massive audience. Even the New York Times published an article this week titled “Social Media Finds New Roll as News and Entertainment Curator.”
The anti-conservative curating bias was first reported by the tech blog Gizmodo. After that, a number of conservative outlets chimed in that the social-media giant has suppressed conservative views and related stories. This triggered news reports by the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, the New York Times, and websites The Hill and Breitbart.
Among the conservatives slated to attend the Zuckerberg meeting are Glenn Beck, Dana Perino of Fox News, Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute, senior Trump campaign aid Barry Bennett, and former Romney digital director Zack Moffat.
How these folks were picked for the meeting is anyone’s guess. And what exactly is expected to come out of this meeting is unclear. It seems more like a public-relations gambit by Zuckerberg, who previously said Facebook will investigate all the conservative charges.
Curiously, last March, Zuckerberg gave a speech at a Facebook conference, where he blasted Donald Trump and his policies. Also curious, Hillary Clinton, by a wide margin, has received the bulk of political donations from Facebook employees in this election cycle.
According to Breitbart, data from the Federal Election Commission show that Facebook staff gave $114,000 to Hillary Clinton. The next closest recipient of political money was former Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio. He only got $16,604.
Tom Stocky, the head of the trending-topics section at Facebook, maxed out with an individual donation of $2,700 to Hillary Clinton. The Hill website found that roughly 78 Facebook employees — from engineering, communications, public policy, strategy, marketing, human resources, and other areas — donated to Clinton.
Meanwhile, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus has tweeted, “Facebook must answer for conservative censorship.” Senator John Thune (R – SD), who is chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, warned Facebook of the need for consumer protection and an open Internet, and according to the Wall Street Journal has sent a letter to Zuckerberg asking how the company chooses its trending topics and who is ultimately responsible. There are also a number of academics who have called for full transparency in the Facebook news process.
Of course, Facebook is a private company, and therefore is entitled to whatever political biases it holds. But given its gigantic size and scope and power over so many news readers, and considering the mounting influence of all the social-media outlets, this is a very serious story.
We’ll see what comes out of Wednesday’s meeting. But as the American proverb goes: Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Published in Politics, Technology
Well I saw a Zuckerberg speech recently where he said, “The work we are doing is important,” the little popinjay. I say there’s a good chance he would regard suppressing what he sees as “hate speech” as “important work.” The self-importance and sanctimony of these people.
Seeing as how the term conservative is basically meaningless with people like you, Larry, backing Donald Trump, I don’t think this really matters any longer. It’s become apparent that conservative ideas and talk are simply commodities used to take people’s money and dupe them to support some false front for special interest policies. So when I hear clarion calls from the likes of you about wanting to help the conservative cause, I know now just to laugh.
Facebook is a private company and can censor to their heart’s content if they believe it’s a smart business decision.
I’m glad these politicians have fixed all the other important problems so they can spend time telling Facebook how to run their business.
Jackwagons.
As reported elsewhere, the under-reported part of the story is even more odious and important. Conservative individuals and posts are regularly censored, according to entirely subjective rules of “community standards.” (Given that FB employees donate 10:1 – like the rest of the “objective” media – in favor of Dems, take a wild guess as to what views “offend the community.”)
As a private company, FB can censor as it pleases. It is none of the government’s business. It is, however, the business of informed members of the public. The first time FB censored a friend’s innocuous post supportive of the Second Amendment, I deleted my account. That is my business and I will not support any private organization which dishonestly represents itself as viewpoint neutral. It is even more obnoxious that FB thinks we are stupid. The proper answer is “delete me!”
It is demoralizing enough that we have a government which does the same things, boldly, and which possesses, and regularly uses, the power to ruin those with the temerity to speak out in disagreement. Dropping FB is easy. A peaceable remedy to state censorship of speech (and now, thought) is considerably more problematic. Some, it seems, are increasingly inclined to temper their disapproval of activist members of certain peaceful religions intent on kinetic/exothermic statements of disapproval of DC elites. Not my type of bedfellow, though, however strange.
Zuck doesn’t care. He will have an “investigation” that will find FB did nothing wrong. Then go about business as usual.
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Facebook has become so popular that many government agencies have created facebook pages. There are tons of government pages on facebook. This gives a tacit government endorsement to facebook as a host for government. Such a host should be neutral.
I want my congressman to lean on facebook. They are not neutral. Government agencies should remove their facebook pages.
Conservatives calling for the government to get involved here are nuts. If govt power can be used against liberal media outlets, it can be used against conservative ones. If Democrats had had a few more votes in the Senate after the 2008 election, they would have instituted a “Fairness Doctrine” on talk radio.
It would be unwise for the government to take any action regarding facebook’s freedom of speech. What I want is for the GOP to force federal agencies to drop out of facebook, since providing great free content on facebook’s platform is a way to subsidize the Leftists at facebook who are supporting the
ProgressiveDemocrat Party.A bit mean spirited?
You don’t believe Larry Kudlow reads these comments do you?
Zuckerberg really is a complete slimeball. He can run his business that way if he wants to, but I left fb some time ago because of this and I’m not looking back.