The head of the American Conservative Union said the group will not take part in Facebook’s talks with similar organizations about its news feeds’ alleged liberal bias, according to an email sent late Monday.
ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp said Facebook contacted him over the weekend about attending a discussion to address the social media site’s controversial “Trending Topics” feature. Schlapp responded with six reasons for his organization’s refusal to participate.
“We appreciate their invitation, especially since our organization and annual conference, CPAC [Conservative Political Action Conference], were specifically targeted, Schlapp wrote in an email. “However, we do not believe that the problem between Facebook and CPAC and the broader conservative community is merely a communication problem. Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg are drawing the wrong conclusion from the negative response from conservatives.”
Schlapp said he would not ignore how the Silicon Valley company has treated conservatives.
Facebook has a history of agitating against conservatives and conservative policies, especially when it comes to ACU’s own conference, CPAC. The facts are:
1) Facebook staff has admitted to suppressing content about CPAC.
2) Facebook rejected ACU’s overtures for Facebook to play a meaningful role at CPAC.
3) The deck is stacked: CPAC content egregiously underperforms on Facebook compared to Twitter and other platforms by factors of 10.
4) The Facebook Trending News Chief, Tom Stocky is a maxed-out donor to Hillary Clinton.
5) Of the 1,000 political donations from Facebook employees, 80% have gone to liberals.
6) Facebook holds liberal positions on important issues such as privacy, property, and priests.
We will not be attending this meeting. We know one meeting cannot possibly resolve all of the above mentioned issues.
Instead, Schlapp said he will sit down with Facebook officials and outside experts to discuss how both parties can “better strike a balance between sterile algorithms choosing news content and when a human curator decides to put a finger on the scale.”
