The White House is painting an ugly picture of tech bias against conservatives

A lack of data and transparency from social media companies has been a crucial force behind Republicans’ accusations that social networks are biased against conservatives, piggybacking off of rising left-wing concerns about data privacy and market power. Again and again, conservatives, like Sens Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) have used personal stories and anecdotes to stoke resentment against platforms and their moderators. And with no broader data to disprove them, the anecdotes are hard to argue with. On May 15, the White House took those theories one step further with a new tool for people who feel as though they’ve been censored by social media companies like Facebook and Twitter. It’s a mystifying tool, working equally well as a threat to social media companies and a list-building tool for the Trump campaign. But the true point of the form could be to fill the data gap pointed out by Sen Cruz and further reinforce President Trump supporters’ sense that they’re being victimized by moderators. The form is most likely to gain submissions from users who already agree that bias against conservatives is a problem, heavily skewing the results. In the next congressional hearing, Republicans could point to White House data indicating that the vast majority of moderation incidents target conservatives, all based on the White House form. With no hard data to say otherwise, it could turn into a powerful talking point.