Why Conservatives Don’t Trust Facebook

My independent team of investigators looked into the complaints, and the company has taken action.
By Jon Kyl
Aug. 20, 2019 10:00 am ET

From the Ivy League to Hollywood and the mainstream media, Americans with traditional morals or conservative politics have often felt excluded from the country’s elite, culture-creating institutions. Facebook offered an alternative: a place to express views and share news that you couldn’t find in the New York Times.

Over time, however, many conservatives lost trust in Facebook, believing it discriminated against them. The increasing scale and complexity of Facebook’s content-moderation practices made matters worse. In 2016 Facebook employees were accused of suppressing conservative articles in the news feed’s now-discontinued “trending” section. In April 2018 Congress grilled Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg about anticonservative bias, from blocked content to suspended accounts.

In response to mounting criticism, Facebook asked me to conduct a survey to hear from conservatives directly. Following substantial public interest in the project and in light of policy changes Facebook has recently made, we have decided to share our findings at this time.

Facebook placed no restrictions on how I could conduct the work. My team at the law firm Covington & Burling LLP began conducting interviews in May 2018. We cast a wide net to include as many aspects of conservatism as possible—from organizations focused on Christian values or protecting free expression to those focused on tax policy and small government. We identified individuals, groups and lawmakers who either use, study or could potentially regulate Facebook, and interviewed 133 of them. To encourage them to speak freely, we told interviewees we wouldn’t publish their identities. We presented our preliminary findings to Facebook in early August 2018 and have been discussing them with the company ever since.

We found conservatives’ concerns generally fall within the following six buckets:

• Content distribution and algorithms. Conservatives have expressed concern that bias against their viewpoints may be “baked in” to Facebook’s algorithms. In addition, interviewees argued that Facebook shouldn’t be in the business of separating fact from fiction in the news.

• Content policies. Facebook’s community standards prohibit hate speech, graphic violence, adult nudity, sexual activity and cruel and insensitive content. Several interviewees pointed to the highly subjective, ever-evolving nature of some of these standards, in particular the term “hate speech.”

• Content enforcement. Interviewees were concerned that the biases of Facebook employees who enforce the rules may result in disproportionate censoring of conservatives. Some midsize and grass-roots organizations also believe their appeals are not taken as seriously as those of larger organizations.

• Ad policies. In the wake of strong evidence from the U.S. intelligence community that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 presidential election with fake social-media accounts and inflammatory content, Facebook required advertisers to register as “political” organizations in order to post ads with a political or policy focus. Some conservative interviewees said this new rule jeopardized their status as nonprofits under Section 501(3) of the tax code.

• Ad enforcement. As a result of Facebook’s new, more stringent ad policies, interviewees said the ad-approval process has slowed significantly. Some fear that the new process may be designed to disadvantage conservative ads in the wake of the Trump campaign’s successful use of social media in 2016.

• Workforce viewpoint diversity. Several interviewees noted the overall lack of viewpoint diversity throughout Facebook’s workforce and senior management.

Facebook has made several changes that are responsive to our findings, and we understand more are being considered. For now, changes include:

• Oversight board. Facebook announced plans last month for an oversight board to hear appeals of some more-difficult content-removal decisions. If structured to reflect accurately the diverse ideological and religious views of Facebook’s user base, the board may help ensure content decisions are made thoughtfully and free from inappropriate bias.

• Explanations of news-feed rankings. To foster user trust in the algorithms that influence content placement, Facebook has launched transparency tools that explain to users why they see certain content on their news feeds.

• Page transparency. Facebook has enabled page managers to see when their content has been removed for violating community standards, or when distribution of a post has been reduced because a fact-checker gave it a “false” rating.

• Staffing. Facebook has hired four additional people devoted exclusively to working with smaller organizations to resolve questions and complaints about content decisions.

• Ad labeling requirements. To avoid incorrectly branding ads as “political,” Facebook renamed its ads library and now refers instead to ads “about social issues, elections or politics.”

• Ad policies. Facebook has changed its ad policies that prohibit images of patients with medical tubes as “shocking and sensational content.” This will make it easier to promote certain pro-life ads.

We believe these and other measures described in our interim report are steps in the right direction. Yet these are complicated issues, some of which involve conflicting opinions even among conservatives. For that reason, restoring trust fully may remain an elusive goal. Conservatives no doubt will, and should, continue to press Facebook to address the concerns that arose in our survey.

As Facebook considers additional changes, we will continue to help it understand conservative perspectives. To live up to its vision as a platform for all ideas, I believe Facebook understands it must do all it can to regain the trust of conservative users.