Sen. John Thune on Tuesday defended his move to order Facebook to confirm or deny whether it is filtering conservative media outlets from appearing on the social network, even as his request faced criticism from Democrats.
“It’s a perfectly legitimate line of inquiry,” Thune, who is chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, told reporters.
There was swift backlash after Thune disclosed a letter sent to Facebook asking for a response to “serious allegations” made in a Gizmodo article in which unnamed former news aggregators for Facebook claimed conservative news outlets were blacklisted.
Thune asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to produce “guidelines” used for aggregating news on the site and requested that Facebook brief his committee staff on the matter.
Members of the media criticized Thune’s move, arguing Congress has no right to regulate what is essentially a news site. But Thune told reporters his panel has jurisdiction over the matter because Facebook claims to the public that it is does not filter the news.
“When you’ve got an organization that is predicated upon and conveys to the American public that we use an objective algorithm when it comes to determining what our trending topics are going to be, we expect that to be followed,” Thune said. “Otherwise, it would be misleading to the American people. Part of our jurisdiction is consumer protection.”
“What we are simply trying to do is get some answers about how their aggregating process works and whether or not it is an objective algorithm or whether there has been some manipulation,” he added.
