Though recent hearings in front of Congress were supposed to expose possible violations of antitrust laws by tech companies, they also served to highlight the lack of trust Republicans have in social media. Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. kicked off the proceedings by complaining of anti-conservative bias, while Rep. Jim Jordan railed about search results.
A Pew Research Center survey found that 90 percent of Republicans and independents who lean Republican believe it’s somewhat likely that social media sites censor political posts—specifically, ones that support their points of view.
Reality proves much the opposite, though. Judd Legum’s Popular Information newsletter regularly reports on the top sources of news on Facebook, with the majority of that list comprising conservative and sometimes outright alt-right sites; ones like The Daily Caller are even given fact-checking powers on the platform. Some sites have even been gaming the system against Facebook’s rules to spread their content even further. A recent study found that news about transgender issues on Facebook comes mostly from sites that are anti-trans. And YouTube is recruiting people to the alt right at record levels.
The political divide in the United States is stark and is apparent in the Pew results when it comes to opinions on whether social media platforms should fact check and flag misinformation. Of the Democrats surveyed, 73 percent strongly or somewhat approved of social media companies labeling posts from elected officials as inaccurate or misleading. Of Republicans, 71 percent disapproved of such labeling, with 39 percent saying they strongly disapprove.