American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp has respectfully declined Facebook’s invitation to engage in a discussion about the social media platform’s presumed anti-conservative bias. One meeting, he said, cannot resolve the underlying problems.
Gizmodo published a report last week revealing how Facebook muzzled conservative news and opinions. The company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, had a hard time believing his team was guilty of silencing conservatives, but announced he was launching an investigation to discover if there was any truth to the charges.
As an additional gesture, Zuckerberg invited a group of influential conservatives to meet and discuss the issue. The confirmed attendees include Fox News’ Dana Perino, CNN’s S.E. Cupp and The Blaze’s Glenn Beck. The ACU appreciated the invite, but in a new statement Schlapp explained why they won’t be joining.
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. It appears that they believe they can avoid having to answer for their actions by hosting conservative luminaries at their state-of-the-art headquarters.
Schlapp went on to list several instances in which Facebook unfairly treated the ACU’s Conservative Political Action Conference, the country's largest annual gathering of conservatives.
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.
With revelations like this, Schlapp asks, does Zuckerberg really think a chat is going to appease conservatives?
The ACU chairman insisted that if Facebook wants to truly mend relationships with conservatives, it needs to be more transparent about its newsfeeds.
"We know one meeting cannot possibly resolve all of the above mentioned issues," he concluded.