After last Monday’s explosive claims published in Gizmodo, in which a former Facebook employer alleged that the “social network” has been “routinely” suppressing conservative news stories, the company and its CEO have been on the back foot defending themselves from, as expected, mostly a conservative media onslaught. In an attempt to resolve the PR crisis, Mark Zuckerberg has invited prominent conservative media figures, including Glenn Beck and Dana Perino, to a meeting at Facebook’s headquarters this week.
As CNN reports, the meeting is scheduled for Wednesday and aims at addressing the alleged suppression of conservative news stories in Facebook’s “trending” stories section.
Along with Perino and Beck, other confirmed attendees include Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute, CNN conservative commentator SE Cupp, and Zac Moffatt, co-founder of tech firm Targeted Victory. Moffatt was previously Mitt Romney’s digital director.
“I’m going in with an open mind and an eagerness to learn more,” Cupp said. “Conservatives and Silicon Valley actually come down on the same side of many issues and share some common concerns. I’m sure we’ll find plenty to talk about, and I’m honored to have been included.”
Cupp sounds like the kind of guy who if he were an analyst, would start every question to management team with “great quarter guys…” no matter how atrocious the results.
As for Zuckerberg, we are confused why not merely show evidence that the alleged censorship never took place instead of needing to massage the messengers, in this case some of the more prominent conservative names. Last Thursday, Zuckerberg said in a blog post that he would invite “leading conservatives and people from across the political spectrum” to talk with him about the controversy.
While hopefully not nearly in awe of Zuckerberg as a smitten Cupp, Glenn Beck wrote on Facebook early Sunday morning that “Mark wanted to meet with 8 or ten of us to explain what happened and assure us that it won’t happen again,” adding that he plans to attend.
Referring to Zuckerberg, he said, “It would be interesting to look him in the eye as he explains and a win for all voices if we can come to a place of real trust with this powerful tool.” It is unclear if this is a preview to an upcoming sponsored message on behalf of Facebook, which after Google, is the world’s second greatest expert at advertising.
As CNN adds, Wednesday’s meeting is said to be the first of several such conversations, signaling that Facebook is well aware of the risk to its reputation that comes from the whiff of bias. Facebook said in a statement last week that it “does not allow or advise our reviewers to discriminate against sources of any political origin, period.”
Curiously, at the same time it was unviled that according to a Facebook manual, “trending” stories do not rely solely on algorithms. Members of the company’s Trending topics team can decide to “inject” or “blacklist” topics for specific reasons, including to prevent duplicate terns from trending.
The manual does not list political content as an acceptable reason to reject a story. It does, however, allow human bias to be part of determining what dtory does get rejected.
“If we find anything against our principles, you have my commitment that we will take additional steps to address it,” Zuckerberg said when he launched the investigation spurred by Gizmodo’s report. It was not immediately clear if the CIA would have a right of first refusal to said “commitment.“
The post Zuckerberg To Meet Conservative Media Figureheads As Facebook Censorship Scandal Escalates appeared first on crude-oil.top.