Apparently Republicans in Congress want some answers from Facebook regarding allegations that they discriminate against conservative points of view. I don’t understand what basis they have to mix in. Why can’t a private company like Facebook adopt any sort of policy they want about liberals vs conservative perspectives? What standing does Congress have to get involved?
This must be an example of the smaller government they keep yammering about.
Maybe they’ll write some regulations.
I was also curious why Congress has a role to play in this. Facebook is a private media company, and I would think they’d be free to present any content they like.
Maybe Congress is going for some deceptive advertising angle? If you claim to offer a balanced and fair representation of the news, but you subtly to introduce a partisan bias, that’s clearly deceptive, right?
It is kind of fascinating. After getting rid years ago of the so-called “fairness doctrine” in regulated broadcast media, how come they now want to pressure chanels in the web and social media into it.
Bayard, I don’t think Facebook advertises itself as a “fair and balanced” news organization. They are not the content hosts anyway.
Possible lines of intent or thinking:
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Most conspiratorial: The Congressmen in question are making a Big Deal of it as part of a general thrust to hype up how Facebook/Google/Apple/etc. are un-American liberal leftist hipster-values nerd outfits, so as to rile up the base against those boogiemen for when they want to go after them on matters of privacy/surveillance, net neutrality, taxation, etc. See also: encryption.
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Someone has noticed that conservatives are using Facebook/Google/etc. but have not been dominating the feeds in the same manner as, for instance, AM radio, and that RightWing sites are popular in the blogosphere but nowhere even in sight of the same ballpark as Facebook, and this is a strategy to rile up the base and whip up vocal demand for more conservative content (or for creating a ConservaBook).
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A whole buncha Congressmen (and a whole buncha people in general) really really really can’t get their minds around the idea of these outfits being unregulated, private status be damned. Or being generous to their intelligence, they feel that the way people use social media it has become de-facto public utilities.
Two problems with #3.
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Social media’s international nature. It’s hard to define a service as a public utility in the US when it covers the world. Bets on how long it would take those social media companies to move to other countries (and take their jobs with them) the second Congress passes legislation attempting to regulate it?
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The First Amendment, on two counts: freedoms of speech and the press. (Granted, the latter is quite possibly a reach, but it could be argued, anyway.)
It’d be a nice talking point against Republicans if they tried, though.
We’ll build a beautiful HYOOOOGE tremendous firewall.
And make ICANN pay for it. 
JRDelirious, yeah, I was just trying to make a little joke about “fair and balanced”. I know they don’t advertise that way. But if Congress wants to start investigating media companies for pushing an agenda, I can think of a few better ones to start with…
Why can’t bakers bake what cakes they wish?
I was going to respond with my own list of quips, but JRdelirious has already phrased most of my points well enough. I’ll just add one more…
- The Republican party vowed long ago to stop cooperating with Democratic Presidents (q.v. The Clinton Years) and this is just another distraction by which they can avoid debating or voting on substantial issues, lest they make a mistake and actually pass a law or approve a nomination* that might unintentionally benefit Democrats.
–G!
*After all, the demigod Reagan got the (then) conservative Scalia into the Supreme Court and, years later, he seemed so horribly liberal to the devolving Right Wing! Can’t afford to make that mistake again!
In light of the article at vox.com who cares what people try to do? Facebook is going to get more politically biased, not less:
And it concludes:
IANAL but my understanding is that bakers are free to discriminate against liberals if they want; they are only not allowed to discriminate against a “protected class.” Political beliefs are not, to my understanding, a protected class under Federal Law.
That was, as I understand it, the great significance of the Supreme Court Ruling in Windsor: it made sexual orientation a full-fledged protected class.
Further even protected class does not apply if the class is intrinsic to the nature of the job. The Catholic church is not obligated to hire females as priests, a “Gentleman’s Club” is not obligated to hire male strippers.
Bottom line though - a conservative newspaper is not obligated to hire a liberal. The NAACP is not obligated to give equal time to representatives of the KKK at their meetings. Fox is not required to give liberal perspectives a platform. MSNBC is does not have to give TP representatives equal time. And a baker cannot discriminate on the basis of race or any other protected class.
Mind you it the allegation is a PR issue of significance for FB as part of their branding is being a neutral conduit of content within broad bounds. Staff exerting editorial control would be of no legitimate state concern even if true (and it has been strongly denied) but it would hurt the brand and does play into a conservative mythology that media (including even social media platforms) is biased to liberal perspectives. Hence conservative Congresscritters bringing it up plays well to their base, even if they actually cannot do anything about it, even if it was actually true. (And for the reasons others have hypothesized in this thread.)
Because discrimination against people is different than discrimination against stories?
Uh. No. Not it didn’t. And that is a point of criticism of the Windsor decision by some analysts. Justice Kennedy wrote in flowery prose about dignity of a marriage but did not write that sexual orientation is a protected class. In doing so the Court used a new analysis that bypassed long held methods of evaluating discrimination claims.
From Boston University Law Review (pdf link):
AFTER THE TIERS: WINDSOR, CONGRESSIONAL POWER TO ENFORCE EQUAL PROTECTION, AND THE CHALLENGE OF POINTILLIST CONSTITUTIONALISM
WILLIAM D. ARAIZA∗
Here’s a quote from the article:
So, Facebook = “online”, huh? I’d say if conservatives don’t feel comfortable on Facebook, they should go somewhere else.
And how is Congress going to get Facebook to humor the delusion that conservatives are the “silent majority” opinion? More articles along the lines of “New evidence proves Earth really is 6000 years old!”? “A scientist explains the mechanics of the Ascension”? “Why destroying Social Security and Medicare is actually good for you”? These would get ripped to shreds in the comments section, so I am not sure how that would help.
When Congressional Republicans are finished with this exercise in limiting free speech, I just hope Facebook includes something in their header along the lines of, “*Now with 50% more bullshit!”
Again, happily NAL, and I dropped in the wrong link. But there does seem to be some debate among those who are about that. The link I meant to drop.
Another. That uses Obergefell as further support that LGBTQ’s status as a protected class is clearly implied in the rulings.
I appreciate that the author of the BU article you cite apparently has, if I could understand it, or keep my eyes open for three seconds of reading it, a different interpretation.
Meanwhile from the second article I linked to:
A hijack but one that octopus’s point hinges upon: is it legal in a state that has no state-specific non-discrimination laws that include LGBTQ status as a protected class for a baker to discriminate on the basis of LGBTQ status? It may be, depending on whose analysis we accept.
If so then in those states bakers can bake the cakes they want and refuse to do so for on the basis of LGBTQ status or political beliefs. So more to be done.
Windsor pre-dated Obergefell. DSeid,you cited Windsor as establishing protected class. It clearly did not. And neither did Obergefell.
And the reasoning in Obergefell again followed the rabbit hole that Windsor went down.
Ginsburg is on the record as essentially agreeing with the result from Roe v Wade but disagreeing with the reasoning. I wonder if the same might be said of Windsor and Obergefell in due time, though curiously for the opposite reasoning - that Windsor and Obergefell did not go far enough.
And failing a clear statement of protected class certain issues remain unsettled. Several states still do not afford homosexuals protection against workplace discrimination. Several states still do not protect LGBT persons from discrimination in housing as well.
Thus it is still legal in many states for a baker to deny service on the basis of sexual orientation. There is no federal law directly on point and no case history in the federal courts on point. Those cases which have successfully challenged such discrimination have done so on the basis of state laws and/or regulations.
And thus to Facebook… Presume *arguendo *they are discriminating based on political viewpoint. So what? Congressional Republicans can complain, but they don;t have a legal leg to stand on. That is perfectly legal expect in a few very narrow instances (e.g. certain government employees enjoy such protection; advocacy of membership in a union is also protected).
It probably is not within the bounds of Congress to regulate the censorship of political information on a privately-owned social media outlet like Facebook.
But, if it is true that Facebook does this, I hope Congress and everyone else raises hell about this. The more bad publicity on a matter like this, the less likely Facebook and others engage in this sort of undemocratic behavior.
This issue affects liberals too, so please don’t get all tribal and stoopid.
What do you mean by “raise hell?”
If a bunch of Congressmen want to talk about it on the chamber floor…let 'em. That’s free speech.
Liberals certainly gripe about Fox News. We just don’t try to get laws passed against them.
I was under the impression that all of the content on Facebook is put there by users, not by Facebook itself. If it’s not “conservative” perhaps that is because most conservatives are watching Fox instead of posting on Facebook?