“Facebook has a history of agitating against conservatives and conservative policies, especially when it comes to ACU’s own conference, CPAC,” Schlapp wrote. He then listed six issues that he does not believe a meeting could possibly resolve:
1) Facebook staff has admitted to suppressing content about CPAC.
2) Facebook rejected ACU’s overtures for Facebook to play a meaningful role at CPAC.
3) The deck is stacked: CPAC content significantly underperforms on Facebook, compared to Twitter and other platforms.
4) The Facebook Trending News chief, Tom Stocky, is a maxed-out donor to Hillary Clinton.
5) Of the 1,000 political donations from Facebook employees, some 80% have gone to liberals.
6) Facebook holds liberal positions on important issues such as privacy, property, and religion.
Schlapp further expressed discontent that Facebook entices people to sign up to use their platform while making a potentially-fraudulent assertion that the company is neutral on news content.
“Facebook has harmed its credibility with conservatives,” the statement reads, “but if they want to mend the relationship, we’re happy to sit down with their experts about how they can better strike a balance between sterile algorithms choosing news content and when a human curator decides to put a finger on the scale. If Facebook wants the benefit of the doubt, they need to start with complete transparency on how decisions are made concerning its newsfeeds.”
Conservative news outlet Breitbart also turned down an invitation from Facebook, stating that they have “zero interest in a Facebook photo-op,” unless Zuckerberg meets personally with their tech editor.
The meeting will take place place nine days after Gizmodo published a report asserting that Facebook’s news curators manipulate the platform’s trending topics section to limit articles favorable to conservative views, for political reasons.
Facebook initially denied the claim, but later admitted that the curators do have more freedom to pick and choose trending topics than they had previously alluded.
“In the US, there are an equal number of conservatives and liberals using our platform, and conservatives are just as engaged—if not more so,” Kaplan, who is a self-described conservative wrote in a Facebook post. “Conservative groups are thriving on Facebook, with exceptionally high levels of engagement.”