Does Facebook nix conservative articles in trending list? Senator's query raises free-speech issues
A senator’s questions about how Facebook maintains its list of “trending” stories raises free-speech issues, according to First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams.
U.S. Sen. John Thune, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, asked Facebook on Tuesday to respond to claims that the website had suppressed articles from conservative sources, the New York Times reports. The Republican senator from South Dakota said the American public should know whether subjectivity influences the list. “That’s just a matter of transparency and honesty,” he said.
Thune sent his questions to Facebook in a letter (PDF) in response to a Gizmodo report.
Facebook executive Tom Stocky said a computer generates the list, but curators remove duplicate stories, hoaxes and other “junk,” the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) reports. The company also said in a statement that it will continue to investigate, according to the Times.
Abrams said Facebook could simply refuse to respond to Thune, citing First Amendment grounds. “The notion of Congress looking into or investigating how a medium of communication decides what to say threatens on its face First Amendment rights,” Abrams told the Times.
The Wall Street Journal notes that a computer may choose the stories, but its algorithms are written by humans. Thune told the publication his interest in the issue is a matter of “consumer protection.”
“We want to know, to just clarify, whether you are using an objective algorithm to determine what your trending topics are, then just fine and show us that’s the case,” Thune said.
