Facebook Keeps Data Secret, Letting Conservative Bias Claims Persist

Conservatives claim that tech platforms disproportionately suppress and censor conservative views online. But the facts to support that case have been hard to find. Technology experts say there is no statistical evidence to support the argument that Facebook does not give conservative views a fair shake. When Republicans claim Facebook is "biased," they often collapse two distinct complaints into one. First, that the social network deliberately scrubs right-leaning content from its site. There is no proof to back this up. Secondly, Republicans suggest that conservative news and perspectives are being throttled by Facebook, that the social network is preventing the content from finding a large audience. That claim is not only unproven, but publicly available data on Facebook shows the exact opposite to be true: conservative news regularly ranks among some of the popular content on the site.

Now, there are some complex layers to this, but former Facebook employees and data experts say the conservative bias argument would be easier to talk about — and easier to debunk — if Facebook was more transparent. The social network keeps secret some of the most basic data points, like what news stories are the most viewed on Facebook on any given day, leaving data scientists, journalists and the general public in the dark about what people are actually seeing on their News Feeds.