Social networking giant Facebook, Inc. has submitted a response to the United States Senate Commerce Committee over allegations that it was biased against Conservative political stories in its trending topics list.

In a letter to Chairman Senator John Thule, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch stated that an investigation into the allegations found that there was “no systematic political bias,” but the company “could not fully exclude the possibility of isolated improper actions or unintentional bias in the implementation of our guidelines or policies.”

Given their admission of potential bias by individual employees, Facebook committed to improve the Trending Topics list by attempting to minimize risks of bias where “human judgement is involved” by making a number of changes, including clearer guidelines, refresher training for all reviewers that emphasizes that content decisions may not be made on the basis of politics or ideology, and the implementation of additional control and oversight around the review team for the product.

In additional, and perhaps the biggest change to Trending Topics, Facebook said they would no longer rely on their “Media 1K” list of RSS feeds from news sites to identify trending topics; Facebook has previously said that it used this list to add topics to the list that were not actually trending on Facebook itself, along with removing the ability to assign an “importance level” to a topic through assessment of the topic’s prominence based on coverage in the media.

Senator Thule issued a statement in response to Facebook’s reply, stating that he was pleased that Facebook has been forthcoming about with how it determines trending topics, and steps it will take to minimize the risk of bias from individual human judgment.

“The seriousness with which Facebook has treated these allegations and its desire to serve as an open platform for all viewpoints is evident and encouraging and I look forward to the company’s actions meeting its public rhetoric,” Thule said.

Not enough

While Facebook’s commitment to making sure its Trending Topics list is not subject to the political whims of its staff is a positive one, it doesn’t address Facebook’s real problem when it comes to bias, and that’s its ongoing use of its “Community Guidelines” to suppress and remove private Facebook groups, even humorous ones, that don’t toe the line when it comes to social justice orthodoxy.

As we wrote May 13:

Facebook is a private company and isn’t bound by the first amendment, and guidelines to manage any community are often needed, but Facebook’s guidelines go much further again and are used as justification to censor, ban and delete any views which its social justice warrior moderation staff disagree with…. despite saying insensitive humor is acceptable, Facebook is currently banning Tumblr or social justice warrior-related humor groups; Shit Tumblr Says and Getting PTSD from tumblr posts without trigger warnings being two recent examples of highly popular Facebook groups that have been shut down despite meeting the humor exemption to the hate speech section of the community guidelines, and they are only two of many that have been shut down in the last year alone.

Despite Facebook’s saying that they are committed to being an open platform, it’s nothing more than lip service until such time that it is applied to all content posted on Facebook, not just content in its Trending Topics list.

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