I wrote about the years-long campaign by conservatives to paint tech companies as being biased in favor of the left — and why it’s been working. https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/right-wing-playbook-against-supposed-liberal-media-bias-being-used-tech-giants-alarming

It’s all essentially an extension of the long-running “liberal media” argument, which really kicked into gear a little more than 50 years ago with the Nixon administration’s attacks on TV broadcasters.

VP Spiro Agnew gave a speech in 1969 that tore into TV news for criticizing a Nixon speech. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/spiroagnewtvnewscoverage.htm

Agnew correctly highlighted the immense power decision-makers in the press had over where the country’s attention would go.

He highlighted a very real problem, and one that sparked my own interest in journalism and other mass communications.

I’ve written about the agenda-setting effect before: https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/lies-damn-lies-and-media-right-wing-repetition-debunked-narratives-reshapes-reality

This is the part of Agnew’s speech where he laid out the right’s strategy for years to come: after identifying a real problem, he shifts to a new argument that essentially says that the real problem isn’t the system in place, but the people at the levers of power.

It was a bit of rhetorical sleight of hand, but it’s what got the ball rolling in the war against the “liberal media.” I’ve previously written about how Tucker Carlson uses that same sort of misdirection to make his arguments: https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlsons-war-ruling-class-master-class-misdirection

So these same principles used to argue that media is biased against conservatives was repurposed to argue that tech companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. have an anti-conservative bias.

In 2016, an article about supposed anti-conservative bias at Facebook set off a series of events that jump-started the campaign to claim bias in tech.

Zuckerberg met with conservatives, gave them everything they wanted, and signaled he could be easily bent to their will.

A lot of the time, arguments of tech bias rely on ignorance of their intended audience. For instance, Twitter rate-limits the number of posts you can make in a given time. It’s happened to me when writing long threads like this.

You’ll get a “rate limit exceeded” message, and will be told to wait a few minutes. It’s not a big deal.

But when this has happened to people on the right, they’ll loudly yell about how this is proof of anti-conservative bias even though it has nothing to do with what they’re posting. https://twitter.com/cwarzel/status/1108400385717424128?s=21 https://twitter.com/cwarzel/status/1108400385717424128

This happens all the time. Glitches and ignorance are (wrongly) highlighted as examples of bias. https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/when-conservatives-claim-censorship-theyre-often-just-showcasing-their-tech-ignorance

A lot of the time, the response will be, “Funny how these ‘glitches’ ONLY happen to people on the right...” but it’s just not true. It’s simply that there’s not a big coordinated effort on the left to highlight glitches as proof of bias. When I’ve been rate-limited, I’ve

simply stopped posting for a few. When I’m able to post again, I don’t start yelling about how I’m being silenced or whatever.

Sometimes the stuff they point to is just absolutely ridiculous. For instance, last year, the right-wing Washington Free Beacon accused Google of trying to hide news related to stories that there were no new indictments in the Mueller probe...

As evidence, they pointed to the fact that when you typed in the word “Trump” and then started the next word with an “i,” it didn’t autosuggest the word “indictments.”

This was a ridiculous claim.

Google responded by saying specifically why this was the case: to prevent Trump and others from unfairly having negative words associated with them https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/1110257803682148352?s=21 https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/1110257803682148352

Another example: in 2018, GOP Rep Kevin McCarthy accused Google of labeling the California Republican Party as being associated with “Nazism” because it popped up in one of their knowledge panels (which mostly come from Wikipedia)

What happened was that someone had edited the wiki page for that item. Google’s knowledge panel picked it up. Someone fixed the wiki page back, and the result switched back, as well.

Google explained this immediately

But as you can see from the deranged responses, people were certain that this was part of a conspiracy, and baselessly alleged that this only happens to conservatives.

Even though McCarthy knew this was false, he CONTINUED making this claim that “Google classified Republicans as Nazis” as recently as February of THIS YEAR. https://twitter.com/gopleader/status/1233411067566575616?s=21 https://twitter.com/gopleader/status/1233411067566575616

And again, Google responded immediately to McCarthy politely explaining again what happened.

Google had already gone step by step through this... explaining IN DETAIL how this works. But rather than click the report button to have a mistake fixed, McCarthy had used it for 2 years of yelling about fake “bias.”

He knows that’s not the case. But he also knows that he can just keep yelling it and Fox News viewers will believe what he says. And Google, afraid of this happening again, will make gestures to try to mollify people who yell “bias!” This is the whole point: play the refs.

Facebook is an example of what happens when companies give in to bad faith cries of bias. From a Washington Post article over the weekend: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/28/facebook-zuckerberg-trump-hate/

It’s all part of a strategy to force companies further and further to the right. They don’t want to eliminate bias, they want to create it.
https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/right-wing-playbook-against-supposed-liberal-media-bias-being-used-tech-giants-alarming

For instance, the big right wing push for conservatives to move to Parler has absolutely nothing to do with a desire to find a Twitter alternative. They’re not leaving Twitter. They just want something they can use as leverage to threaten to leave Twitter for.

It’s all always just about creating a competitive advantage. They love bias... when it’s in their favor. And on social media, it is.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy today’s piece. https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/right-wing-playbook-against-supposed-liberal-media-bias-being-used-tech-giants-alarming