They did explain how hard it would be for Facebook employees to inject bias into what stories make it into the “trending topics” section of the site or on individual users’ news feeds, Cupp said.
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Zuckerberg, evidently concerned his company’s reputation was being tarnished, called an urgent meeting with more than a dozen leading conservatives. And their ideology, which values the right for private enterprises to make independent decisions, limits what they can ask Facebook for.
Bluey suggested prominent conservative sites to include among those that Facebook’s algorithm scours for topics of interest or for vetting stories – including Conservative Review, Newsmax, the Federalist and Townhall,as well as his own. The recent controversy came to light after the recent report from Gizmodo.
Tucker Carlson, the editor in chief of Daily Caller who also attended the meeting, was a bit more skeptical in his assessment, saying that Facebook’s power is concerning, though he is “persuaded they’re worried” about losing trust.
Still, conservatives in the meeting disagreed over how to solve the issue of bias, he said. “We launched two years ago, and Facebook is one of the platforms we use to reach our audience”. Perino said the argument was “fairly tamped down” and pointed out that Barry Bennett from the Trump campaign was set to attend the meeting as well.
Glenn Beck left his meeting with Facebook and other conservative leaders on Wednesday disturbed with how his right wing peers handled the summit.
Zuckerberg’s data would concur. And Fox News drives more interactions on its Facebook page than any other news outlet in the world. “It’s not even close”, he added.
Not all conservative media figures were so enamored of Zuckerberg’s efforts at reconciliation.
The Menlo Park, California, company said it is investigating the matter.
“We have rigorous guidelines that do not permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or the suppression of political perspectives”, Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post last week. He’s particularly interested in what he describes as the occasional “unusual patterns” that refer visitors to the Heritage Foundation and the Daily Signal sites. Facebook executives used the point to bring up an inquiry sent to them last week by Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota.
First, Facebook may have begun as a place for college students to poke friends and share photos, but those are no longer its defining traits – it is now a major force in news consumption. He said his primary concern was that Facebook was potentially being deceptive about how the news curation algorithms work.
In the meeting, Facebook maintained that it does not have any “direct specific evidence” that conservative news was suppressed on Trending Topics, according to Perino. In the Silicon Valley view, Facebook is a democratic tool in which the most-liked articles rise to the top. As of March 2016, about 55% of the PAC’s contributions went to Republicans, the center says.
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Alienating a particular political party – or its constituents – could potentially hurt Facebook’s popularity over time with users and, perhaps more importantly, with advertisers and potential partners.
