How Facebook, Twitter silence conservative voices online

[Commentary] The recent news that Facebook staffers had sought to delete Donald Trump’s posts calling for restrictions on Muslim immigration as violating the company’s hate speech policies has revived the ongoing controversy about ideological neutrality in the social networks. This time at least, the Facebook employees were overruled by CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the grounds that this would amount to political censorship, but the issue raises the question: Is there a problem of anti-conservative bias in the social media? And if so, what’s the answer?

It should be noted that Trump is not a standard conservative — indeed, many conservatives say he’s not a conservative at all — and plenty of people on the right have denounced his proposed Muslim ban. But this is far from the only instance in which major social media platforms have been accused of political censorship toward right-leaning content. Last May, allegations were made that Facebook had suppressed conservative views from its “trending topics;” while Facebook claimed that its internal investigation found no evidence of systematic suppression, the company also announced that it would modify the process of trending topic selection to minimize the potential for abuse. To stop the fragmentation, these companies’ leadership should make a good-faith effort to live up to their promise of political inclusiveness and free debate. The conversation on curbing harassment while protecting speech is important; but it must include a truly diverse base of advocates.

[Young is a contributing editor for Reason magazine and a columnist for Newsday.]