Free Speech/First Amendment Advocates Find Government Inquiries Into Facebook Troubling
Two free speech and journalism experts said they're concerned about the Senate Commerce Committee's inquiry into allegations Facebook may have skewed its trending topics feature toward more liberal stories by suppressing conservative political viewpoints. There's no reason for government involvement -- whether it's about content management or consumer protection, they said Wednesday. "Overall, it’s very disturbing to see Congress trying to become a policeman of social media," Media Institute Executive Director Richard Kaplar said in an interview.
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Both the Senate and the House Commerce committees are weighing in on the allegations against Facebook, which were first reported by Gizmodo (see 1605100032), asking Facebook to brief their staffs. But Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., who heads the Senate panel, has been more vocal about his involvement and released a letter he sent to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking pointed questions about the module that is supposed to show "objective" trending stories. Gizmodo reported on interviews with several former Facebook contractual employees who said they manipulated the site as directed and even suppressed some conservative-minded stories.
A Senate Commerce Committee spokesman told us Wednesday that "sites like Facebook are free to make decisions about what content they want to put on their platform or not want to put on their platform. But if they’re going to represent to users or consumers that they’re using an objective algorithm to make those decisions that’s what should be happening. They shouldn’t be representing that’s happening and yet it’s a different process that’s making those decisions if … the allegations are true." He said the Drudge Report and The Huffington Post openly make subjective decisions about what their sites will include and emphasize "and if a site wants to take on the mantle on editorial decision making that’s their right."
"It is very troubling to see the government get into content management, no matter what the reason" and a First Amendment issue is raised here, Paul Fletcher, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, said in an interview. He said allegations against Facebook are "troubling" and it may lose credibility or trust with users, but it's not proper for the federal government to be asking those questions.
Fletcher also questioned Thune's raising of the consumer protection issue with Facebook. He said most federal statutes are designed to prohibit oppressive or deceptive conduct, such as "lemon laws" that prevent car dealers from deceiving buyers and selling them bad cars. "I don’t think their consumer protection laws protect anybody from Internet content or sharing points of view or preserving the fact that they should hear this point of view or this content as opposed to that point of view or content," Fletcher said. "That’s not what consumer protection is. I would argue with Sen. Thune on that."
"We have a long history in this country of federal government keeping itself out of media content," Kaplar said. For instance, he said, the Communications Act of 1934 explicitly says the FCC has no role in regulating content. And while no regulation has been proposed, he said even this type of congressional action is "an affront to the spirit of the First Amendment." Kaplar said he doesn't recall any government entity trying to investigate content of social media and "frankly, I don't even know why they would want to do this. To me this doesn't even rise to the level of the Pentagon Papers or something like that. It's social media -- come on."
University of Nebraska College of Law professor Gus Hurwitz wrote in the American Enterprise Institute's TechPolicyDaily.com Wednesday that Facebook's "use of its editorial discretion to shape the news alarms many because of its sheer size" and the site has "become one of modern America's primary sources of news." He said Facebook has more than 100 times more U.S. users as there are The New York Times subscribers, 50 times more than Fox News Channel's most popular show, and six times as many as all three nightly network news programs combined. But Hurwitz also said most Americans don't trust social media as a news source.
And while Facebook, Twitter and Google are competing for user attention through news, they're "still trying to get their footing," Hurwitz said, and any missteps could hurt their reputations. "The last thing we should do is introduce regulation into the equation. We cannot depoliticize the news by putting it under the aegis of regulation. Regulation is inherently political, captured constantly by our political masters of the day," Hurwitz said. "The remedy for bad speech, in this case as in others, remains more speech."
Fletcher pointed to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story Wednesday that cited a 2007 quote by Thune, who said that "the hair stands up on the back of my neck when I hear government officials offering to regulate the news media and talk radio to ensure fairness." Fletcher said there were "people on the left" who had complained about conservative talk radio's content. But he said whether it comes from the right or left, either side doesn't trust the public to make its own decisions about such issues. "There’s a kind of parochialism on both sides I think when that happens," he said. "In each case, I think it’s kind of threatening to the First Amendment, which bugs us. People are smart enough to make their own decisions. I think you have to start from that point of view."