Reality Has A Well-Known Bias

The right wing loudmouths are furious over the report from former Republican Sen. Jon Kyl on Facebook's "anti-conservative bias" and now everyone is involved in a healthy outing of goalpost-moving.

"Freedom of expression undergirds the First Amendment," Kyl writes in his conclusion, as well as being considered a basic human right by the United Nations. But for all the complaints identified by participants in the research, the report does not actually identify any specific or consistent bias.

"Facebook's policies and their application have the potential to restrict free expression," Kyl notes. "Given the platform's popularity and ubiquity, this is a danger that must be taken seriously." The platform has made some baby steps toward transparency that help, he concludes, but "[t]here is still significant work to be done to satisfy the concerns we heard from conservatives."

"While we err on the side of free speech, there are critical exceptions: we don't allow content that might encourage offline harm or is intended to intimidate, exclude, or silence people," Facebook communications VP Nick Clegg wrote in a company blog post. "And we work to slow and reduce the spread of content like debunked hoaxes and clickbait by downranking it in News Feed. We know we need to listen more as we work to strike the right balance with these policies."

As Facebook is going to learn at its own peril. once you give in to the bullies, there's no stopping them from demanding more and more from you.

Facebook might have hoped having a staunch conservative oversee the audit and write the report would mitigate criticism by Republicans. It did not. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said in a statement that the report wasn't a genuine audit. Instead, he called it "a smokescreen disguised as a solution."

"Facebook should conduct an actual audit by giving a trusted third-party access to its algorithm, its key documents, and its content-moderation protocols," Hawley added. "Then Facebook should release the results to the public."

The Media Research Center, a conservative organization, criticized the report, saying it "stunningly fails to admit fault or wrongdoing," and that any changes made by Facebook to date toward addressing the complaints levied by conservatives are "empty and insulting."

So now Facebook is going to have to reveal its family secrets to a "trusted" third-party, one that of course Donald Trump's coming executive order will pick for them and control. 

The practical upshot is of course that unfortunately, the Trump regime will need to have this independent agency control Facebook's policies, along with that of all other social media companies in order to ensure the First Amendment rights of citizens.

Once again, the only real question is how much the Roberts Court will let Trump get away with before the 2020 elections.