Gizmodo broke the news this week that Facebook intentionally silenced conservative news on its social media platform. “News curators,” the report read, would make sure right-wing views never made it to popular sections like Trending Topics.
The allegations were so egregious that Republican senators are demanding answers from Facebook leadership. On Thursday night, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated he is ready to comply with their requests.
Zuckerberg said in his Thursday post that the company took the Gizmodo claims very seriously and was conducting a full investigation to ensure the integrity of its trending module was upheld.
"Every tool we build is designed to give more people a voice and bring our global community together," Zuckerberg insisted in the message. The CEO says his company has found “no evidence” to support the allegations in the report, but that if they do find anything suspicious, they will take “additional steps” to address it.
It’s not clear yet what those steps would be.
The Guardian released a report on Thursday confirming that human intervention, not computer algorithms, account for the anti-conservative bias. At one point, the team of news curators was comprised of just 12 people.
That’s a lot of power.
If Facebook wants to prove it is serious about being an open platform for all views, it could start by making its news curation service a bit more transparent.