July 12, 2018

Facebook Decides That Its Big Problem Is Fake Liberal News

Alexander Pohl/NurPhoto via ZUMA

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Facebook is bringing in some experts to advise it on bias against conservative voices:

The conservative bias advising partnership will be led by former Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, along with his team at Covington and Burling, a Washington law firm. Kyl will examine concerns about alleged liberal bias on Facebook, internally and on its services. They will get feedback directly from conservative groups and advise Facebook on the best way to work with these groups moving forward.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy think tank, will convene meetings on these issues with Facebook executives. Last week the group brought in tech policy expert Klon Kitchen to host an event with Facebook’s head of global policy management, Monika Bickert.

Bias against conservatives. Sure. That’s what Facebook needs to be concerned about. Here is Facebook’s own video about its fight against fake news:

There are five specific examples of fake news that are mentioned in this video:

  • Russian troll farms.
  • Pizzagate.
  • Hate speech by white nationalists.
  • An undocumented immigrant supposedly responsible for starting a California wildfire.
  • A photoshopped picture of the Seattle Seahawks burning an American flag in their locker room.

But yes: let’s focus our attention on bias against conservatives. This is surely one of the most spectacular examples of working the refs ever. It’s right up there with James Comey making Donald Trump president because he was afraid Republicans would get mad if he followed normal FBI policy.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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