U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz has issued a criminal referral to the Department of Justice against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Gaetz alleges that the leader of Facebook lied to Congress during the 2018 congressional hearings about privacy, Russian meddling, and other pressing themes. Specifically, Representative Gaetz draws upon a report from Project Veritas to claim that Zuckerberg lied about Facebook’s censorship policies being politically neutral; Project Veritas and the Representative allege that Facebook is actually disproportionately targeting conservative and pro-Trump postings on its platform for removal.
A criminal referral involves a Congressperson or someone else referring an individual or responsible party to an agency, such as the Department of Justice, for further investigation or processing of the claim. Time will tell what William Barr, the current US Attorney General, will choose to do in response to the referral. A similar referral, albeit antitrust between private parties, has recently been made against Microsoft in Europe. Meanwhile, the evidence in this most recent claim against Facebook is weak at best, as Project Veritas’s June 2020 report relies upon the claims of two former Facebook employees that have merely provided “straws in the wind,” or evidence that does not actually provide any solid proof and could actually support multiple different theories. The quotes provided are provocative though and play into longstanding clashes within the political theater.
Representative Gaetz’s letter cites the Project Veritas report, in which their sources claim that 75 to 80 percent of posts targeted for removal were from conservative persons or organizations, or expressed conservative views. Gaetz further challenges Mr. Zuckerberg’s “willingness to cooperate with [Congressional] oversight authority…”, essentially stating that he expects continued dishonesty and obfuscation that will be costly for Congress as it seeks to prove that Facebook is acting with political bias. Once again, time will tell. The letter and allegations come only days prior to a new and high profile antitrust congressional hearing during which Congress will grill the leaders of Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon. The upcoming hearings, which were originally scheduled to take place on Monday, have been moved to Wednesday July 29 at noon EST, in the wake of the passing of John Lewis.
Who Will Be ‘The Arbiters Of Truth’ In Facebook Bias Claims?
If Facebook has a policy that censors nude pictures posted on the platform, regardless of the gender of the poster, and 80 percent of the pics that are censored by an A.I. algorithm are posted by male users, is that somehow not gender neutral? Democrats share misinformation, hate, and other targeted content as well; what one needs to prove is that one side in this hypothetical case is getting away with posting the same pics while the other is not and to do so beyond merely pointing to statements about nudes as proof of actual behavior on the job. If men disproportionately post nudes at a rate that approximates 80 percent and the deviation between the frequency of censored posts and actual posts is not statistically significant, then the rule should be considered gender neutral.
None of the evidence presented by the “whistleblowers” actually provides any decisive proof of political bias. Plenty of individuals within government and the private sector are capable of expressing their political views, while engaging in professional legal rational behavior, in line with company and or government policies. That said, the censorship powers of major tech firms are potentially alarming and genuinely merit concern.
Whistleblowers tend to be more credible when they can provide a “smoking gun” rather than mere speculation and alluring quotes. Given the levels of access that one would have while working in the positions that Project Veritas’s sources had, one must be extremely curious why the Project Veritas sources were only able to provide polemical statements from colleagues rather than actual proof. While some might question how much Congress can actually achieve in this field, time will likely reveal hidden truth and a whistleblower will come forward with actual proof, if the claims are true. Meanwhile, Facebook and others could act to assuage concerns sooner rather than allowing continued doubts; this would involve providing a third party, independent and neutral inquiry with access to all censored and non-censored content to perform a statistical study that would determine whether conservative content is being targeted disproportionately by companies like Facebook, or whether they just happen to post more “nudes.”
