Facebook and media bias

 Power Line:

The Wall Street Journal has obtained internal Facebook documents that shed light on how politics has affected the social media giant’s behavior in recent years. Some argue that the documents confirm suspicions that Facebook deliberately suppresses conservative views, but to me the story seems more complicated than that:

Many Republicans, from Mr. Trump down, say Facebook discriminates against conservatives. The documents reviewed by the Journal didn’t render a verdict on whether bias influences its decisions overall. They do show that employees and their bosses have hotly debated whether and how to restrain right-wing publishers, with more-senior employees often providing a check on agitation from the rank and file. The documents viewed by the Journal, which don’t capture all of the employee messaging, didn’t mention equivalent debates over left-wing publications.

I think that is a key point. The New York Times and Washington Post are just as partisan as Breitbart, a major focus of the WSJ story, and they are no more accurate. Yet Facebook pays them for, and features prominently, their content. Apparently no one at Facebook has ever questioned whether false and hateful reporting by the Post and the Times, such as the Russia collusion hoax to name just one example, should cause their content to be suppressed or downgraded.

Facebook employees focused special attention on Breitbart, the documents show, criticizing Facebook for showcasing the site’s content in News Tab and for helping it to sell ads. They also alleged Facebook gave special treatment to Breitbart and other conservative publishers, helping them skirt penalties for circulating misinformation or hate speech.

Right-wing sites are consistently among the best-performing publishers on the platform in terms of engagement, according to data from research firm NewsWhip. That is one reason Facebook also is criticized by people on the left, who say Facebook’s algorithms reward far-right content.

Twitter recently released a report claiming that its algorithm favors conservative content, an assertion that seems hard to believe. But perhaps it is true that conservative posts get more engagement on average than liberal ones.

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Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg does not spend $400 million to get Biden elected because he has a conservative bias.  But he is in business to make money and the data suggests that conservative material gets more views.