During last week’s congressional hearings investigating the accessing of data from (at least) 87 million Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica, several Republican lawmakers worried that companies like Facebook might have a “liberal bias” in the way it enforces its rules and moderates content posted by users. In 10 separate instances, Republicans brought up cases in which content posted by conservative-leaning Facebook users had been removed in error by the company. The most frequently cited case was the alleged censorship of conservative video bloggers Diamond and Silk. They have asserted since September that Facebook has purposely limited the reach of their brand page, and on April 5, they received a message from Facebook’s policy team saying the company determined their content was “unsafe to the community.”
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the first step must be more public accountability. The concerns users have about potential bias all come about because moderation systems are so impenetrable. Users often don’t have the information they need to understand why their content was removed or their account suspended, and independent researchers don’t have access to the data they need to investigate claims of systemic bias.
Source: How Facebook can prove it doesn’t discriminate against conservatives.