Facebook is aggressively pushing back on the idea that it could (or would) tilt the scales in the presidential election against Donald Trump.
After CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly denounced the political positions of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign during the keynote speech of the company’s annual F8 developer conference...
“I hear fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing people they label as ‘others,’” Zuckerberg said, never referring to Trump by name. “I hear them calling for blocking free expression, for slowing immigration, for reducing trade, and in some cases, even for cutting access to the internet.”
For a developer’s conference, the comments were unprecedented - a signal that the 31-year-old billionaire is quite willing to publicly mix politics and business.
Gizmodo reports that inside Facebook, the political discussion has been more explicit. Last month, some Facebook employees used a company poll to ask Zuckerberg whether the company should try “to help prevent President Trump in 2017." Every week, Facebook employees vote in an internal poll on what they want to ask Zuckerberg in an upcoming Q&A session. A question from the March 4 poll was: “What responsibility does Facebook have to help prevent President Trump in 2017?”
A screenshot of the poll, given to Gizmodo, shows the question as the fifth most popular.
As Gizmodo adds, it’s not particularly surprising the question was asked, or that some Facebook employees are anti-Trump. The question and Zuckerberg’s statements on Tuesday align with the consensus politics of Silicon Valley: pro-immigration, pro-trade, pro-expansion of the internet.
But now, as The Hill reports, a spokesperson for the company says it cannot confirm or deny leaks but bristled at the suggestion it would seek to help or hinder any political candidate.
"We encourage any and all candidates, groups, and voters to use our platform to share their views on the election and debate the issues,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
“We as a company are neutral — we have not and will not use our products in a way that attempts to influence how people vote.”
Which seems in direct opposition to the clearly un-neutral comments that Zuckerberg shared recently.
And one final thought, while FB employees appear to be left-leaning "safe space"-creating establishmentarians, the firm's billions of 'customers' are most certainly not - as is very evident by the soaring popularity of non-mainstream political parties around the world. So, the question that has to be asked is - will Facebook's 'bias' cost them millions in eyeballs? Judging by this week's debacle over AdParlor's hastedly denied talk of an 18% plunge in ad spend, perhaps it already is...