Facebook to probe anti-conservative bias, brings aboard GOP ex-Sen. Jon Kyl
Move comes after 60 conservative leaders declared ‘crisis’
By Valerie Richardson - The Washington Times - Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Facebook has brought in former Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl to examine allegations of anti-conservative bias and launched a legal audit of its impact on minority communities.
Mr. Kyl, now with the law firm Covington and Burling, will lead a “conservative bias advising partnership” aided by the Heritage Foundation, which will “convene meetings on these issues with Facebook executives,” according to the Tuesday announcement on Axios.
The civil rights audit will be headed by former ACLU legislative director Laura Murphy and conducted by the law firm of Relman, Dane & Colfax, with feedback from groups such as the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
“We are encouraged by Facebook’s commitment to conduct a civil rights audit of the company and its products, and the team they have selected to do it,” said Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the conference.
Facebook has come under fire for discrimination over tools that had allowed advertisers to exclude minority viewers from seeing housing ads and target their pitches to anti-Semitic audiences.
The announcement comes a day after more than 60 conservative leaders issued a joint statement declaring that anti-right censorship on social media platforms had “reached a crisis level.”
Social media companies must ensure their policies are fair to conservatives. http://ow.ly/FA1V30jMwnY
“Social media firms have banned gun videos and rejected pro-life advertisements,” said the statement led by Media Research Center President Brent Bozell.
Other signers included Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, chairman of the House Media Fairness Caucus; former Attorney General Edwin Meese; Live Action President Lila Rose, Citizens United President Dave N. Bossie; Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin; and former Republican Rep. Allen West.
“They have skewed search results and adjusted trending topics in ways that have harmed the right,” said the statement. “Firms have restricted and deleted videos, even academic content. Conservative tech employees have found their speech limited and their careers harmed.”
The statement calling for “equal treatment on tech and social media” targeted Facebook, Twitter, Google and “YouTube especially.”
“Top tech companies have given preferential treatment to anointed legacy media outlets that also lean left. These same tech titans then work with groups openly hostile to conservatives to restrict speech,” said the conservative statement.
House and Senate Republicans pounded the bias theme at hearings last month featuring Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, calling on him to address free-speech as well as privacy issues.
Facebook came under fire Monday after accidentally posting an option live that asked viewers, “Does this post contain hate speech?”
“This was an internal test we were working on to understand different types of speech, including speech we thought would not be hate. A bug caused it to launch publicly. It’s been disabled,” Facebook said in a statement to Legal Insurrection.
Before it was taken down, however, the conservative group Turning Point USA said one of its chapters had already been flagged for hate speech.
Facebook's "glitch" already caused our @TPUSA chapter at #UTAusin to get flagged for hate speech within hours of the option going live. https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/status/991358550411792384 …
My comments: The only permanent Solution is to make Facebook, Google, Youtube and Twitter Public Utilities which in effect they are. There should be No Censorship except that which promotes Violence.
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