Despite bias claims, new data shows that Facebook is still not censoring conservatives

A new 20-week Media Matters study on Facebook pages that regularly post about American political news again found that right-leaning pages and left-leaning pages have nearly identical engagement rates, while right-leaning pages on average earned more weekly interactions than left-leaning pages. Some findings:

• Right-leaning and left-leaning pages had the same engagement relative to page size and posting frequency, and they outperformed pages without political alignment. Right-leaning and left-leaning pages had the same overall interaction rate (a metric measuring the performance of a page relative to the number of page likes) during our 20-week study, at 0.15%. Pages without political alignment had an overall interaction rate of 0.08%. 
• This study’s overall findings on engagement are consistent with two previous Media Matters studies. In our initial 2018 study, Media Matters reviewed political engagement on Facebook between Jan and July 1, 2018, and found that left-leaning and right-leaning pages on average had virtually the same interaction rate. A follow-up study published earlier this year of engagement between July 2, 2018, and March 17, 2019, also found that right-leaning and left-leaning pages had the same average interaction rate.