President Donald Trump has promised to look into accusations of anti-conservative bias on Facebook, after the social media giant apparently blocked his social media chief Dan Scavino from commenting.
Scavino complained on Monday that Facebook had abruptly blocked him from replying to his followers, with the company claiming his comments had been reported as spam.
“AMAZING. WHY ARE YOU STOPPING ME from replying to comments,” he wrote. “People have the right to know. Why are you silencing me???”
“I will be looking into this!” Trump tweeted in response. The president has often accused Silicon Valley tech companies of discriminating against conservative users, and did so again on Tuesday. “Facebook, Google and Twitter, not to mention the Corrupt Media, are sooo on the side of the Radical Left Democrats,” he tweeted. “But fear not, we will win anyway, just like we did before!”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly dismissed accusations of liberal bias directed at the company. Grilled by Republican lawmakers on the topic last year, Zuckerberg claimed that their examples of censorship were once-off mistakes, but did admit that most of his employees probably lean left politically.
These accusations have come from within the company too. An anonymous whistleblower told conservative watchdog Project Veritas last month that Facebook actively developed and uses “deboosting” tools to suppress and delete right-wing content. Last year, a Facebook employee called the company a liberal “monoculture that’s intolerant of different views,”and savaged Facebook’s workforce for being “quick to attack – often in mobs – anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology.”