Facebook CEO Zuckerberg seeks meeting with conservatives

Stories with insufficient sources also shouldn’t be included: “Use this when we think a topic is connected to a real-world event but the available information is not sufficient to characterise the topic with confidence”, Facebook’s guidelines explain. “If we find anything against our principles, you have my commitment that we will take additional steps to address it”, he writes.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he’ll invite “leading conservatives” to chat about reports that his company’s Trending Topics section has a significant liberal bias. On Wednesday, top politics trends for one U.S. user included comments from “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson on the transgender bathroom issue as well as the Facebook trending controversy itself.

“Any attempt by a neutral and inclusive social media platform to censor or manipulate political discussion is an abuse of trust and inconsistent with the values of an open Internet”, Thune said in a statement Tuesday.

In a post on the site on Thursday, chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg said he meant to have a conversation with “leading conservatives and people from across the political spectrum”, to talk about the issue of how the site curates stories for readers.

Facebook has endured a barrage of scrutiny this week after anonymous sources told Gizmodo that the company “routinely” instructed contractors to suppress news with conservative points of view.

The trending feature was introduced in 2014 and appears to the right of the Facebook newsfeed.

The Guardian first reported on Facebook’s editorial guidelines.

His company is a Facebook Marketing Partner, but he contended that his perspective isn’t affected by that relationship.

A report in technology website Gizmodo had accused Facebook of an editorial bias against conservative news organisations, which led to a call for a congressional inquiry from Senator John Thune (Rep) from South Dakota and Chairperson of US Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over media issues. It might also include Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin congressman and Speaker of the House of Representatives; maybe it includes Ted Cruz, and while he prefers Twitter (8.1 million followers); it might also include the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump (7.7 million Facebook fans).

Facebook hasn’t said how many people are responsible for the trending topics team.

In his post, Mr. Zuckerberg doubled down on the company’s assertion that the site’s guidelines don’t allow “the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or the suppression of political perspectives”.

“For instance, after algorithms detect early signs of popular stories on the network, editors are asked to cross-reference potential trending topics with a list of 10 major news publications, including CNN, Fox News, The Guardian and The New York Times”.

Zuckerberg said the reason he cares so much about this is that it gets to the core of everything Facebook is and everything he wants it to be. The company released a 28-page internal document detailing the guidelines for how its trending news process works.