Social media giant Facebook acknowledged to a Senate committee on Monday that it couldn’t rule out that some of its employees might have altered the “Trending Topics” section of people’s pages in order to exclude conservative news.
The charge of liberal bias at Facebook prompted media groups and members of Congress to ask the company whether it was true, and what Facebook might do to correct it.
In a letter to Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee John Thune, R-S.D., Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch said the company found “no evidence of systematic political bias” in the selection of news stories.
Stretch said conservative and liberal news was treated “virtually identical” in the trending topics section.
“At the same time, as you would expect with an inquiry of this nature, our investigation could not exclude the possibility of isolated improper actions or unintentional bias in the implementation of our guidelines or policies,” he added.
As a result, Stretch said it has taken steps to ensure stories aren’t hindered based on decisions about personal political views. He said the company would impose “additional controls and oversight,” and end the company’s reliance on “external websites” to identify, validate or assess trending topics.
But Facebook said specifically it couldn’t verify allegations that news about Republican political figures, “American Sniper” Chris Kyle, former IRS employee Lois Lerner, TheBlaze owner Glenn Beck or the Drudge Report were downplayed in the trending topics section.
