By Melissa Ryan
“We do not.” – Facebook Head of Global Policy Management Monika Bickert when asked directly if Facebook had a bias against conservatives.
This week during an interview with Yahoo News, a Facebook executive admitted what the rest of us have known all along, Facebook does not, in fact, have an anti-conservative bias. Media Matters’ Natalie Martinez has proved this with multiple studies. Facebook’s own Conservative Bias audit, which they hired Republican lobbyist (and occasional Senator) Jon Kyl to write, showed that the right had a lot of feelings about supposed bias but could not produce any evidence or data that it exists.
Facebook has now spent more than two years trying to appease Republicans on this non-issue to no avail. Trump and the GOP will keep whining about conservative bias that doesn’t exist because they feel it’s a winning strategy for them, because they know tech companies will continue to cave, and because it’s a way for them to show support for white supremacists and male supremacists when tech companies take down the latter content (without having to explicitly endorse their views.) The Trump administration is also seeking to regulate the social media companies against bias that doesn’t exist and has drafted an executive order compelling the “Federal Communications Commission to regulate how social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube moderate the content that users put on their platforms.”
This week Buzzfeed’s Claudia Koerner reports that Facebook took down a fact check of an anti-abortion video after four Republican Senators – Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Kevin Cramer, and Mike Braun – complained. The Senators sent a letter to Facebook “accusing the company of censorship and bias against conservatives. At issue were two videos published by anti-abortion group Live Action and its founder, Lila Rose, which were rated as inaccurate by an independent fact-checking group.”
Facebook took down factually correct information for purely political reasons. The squeaky wheel gets oiled and no one is better than being a squeaky wheel than Trump’s Republican party.
In the context of the 2020 elections, this is a huge problem. The Federal Elections Commission (FEC) has essentially shut down and unless Trump appoints more commissioners (highly unlikely) it will be unable to open investigations or enforce campaign violations this election cycle. With no government body to set and enforce digital ad policies, Facebook and the tech companies are left to set policies and resolve disputes on their own. If Facebook can be bullied into removing an accurate medical video for purely political reasons the Right will absolutely use this tactic with other types of political content and ads.
The lack of an organized outrage machine puts progressives at a strategic disadvantage and nowhere is that more clear than the conservative bias myth that will not die. We can’t fight disinformation and propaganda effectively without mounting our own offense to pressure tech companies. The good news is that unlike Trump and the GOP, progressives won’t have to make things up to have an argument to mobilize around.
By Patrik Hermannson
Since 2006 Hans Herman Hoppe, a German-American right-wing libertarian academic, has hosted the annual Property and Freedom Society (PFS) conference in Bodrum, Turkey. The conference has hosted academics from well-known institutions (this year’s speaker list includes one academic from King’s College in London) but also prominent far-right thinkers from across the globe. The likes of Peter Brimelow, John Derbyshire, Tomislav Sunic, Jared Taylor, Richard Spencer and Paul Gottfried have all spoken at the conference.
The combination of libertarian thinkers – whose politics allow for greater mainstream acceptability – and far-right activists makes the conference an interesting meeting point between the two movements, particularly given its international scope. It also highlights how libertarian principles can be used to make conceptual space for racism and the whitewashing of far-right views.
Read the full story here.
Want even more links? Support us on Patreon to receive a second ICYMI post just for CARD members.
Exciting news, we’ve scheduled our next call exclusively for Patrons!
This call with be with Melissa Ryan and Patrik Hermansson, a HOPE not hate researcher and subject of the documentary “Undercover in the Alt-Right.” Patrik will speak about his time infiltrating the far right in America and the UK, and we’ll open up the call for questions about the film or anything else that’s been on your mind.
Normally this call is for Patrons at the Silver Level and above but we’re opening this call up for Bronze members as well. Want to join us? Become a CARD Patron (Bronze level and above) today!
That’s all for now. Talk to you again next week!
With so much discussion about Reform UK’s success at the general election, there has been a flurry of articles written about the party and Nigel…
