Radio host Glenn Beck and American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks are some of the conservative leaders Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to meet with this week.
The meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, follows a report that Facebook employed bias in the way it selected stories for its “Trending Topics” feature. A report in the tech blog Gizmodo claimed that Facebook downplays conservative news subjects. Facebook denies that report, which relied upon a single anonymous individual with self-described conservative leanings.
Nonetheless, Zuckerberg said the Menlo Park, California, company is investigating the matter and has invited conservative leaders to meet with him. Others invited include Zac Moffatt, the co-founder of conservative technology company Targeted Victory, and Dana Perino, co-host of The Five on Fox News Channel.
“I want to have a direct conversation about what Facebook stands for and how we can be sure our platform stays as open as possible,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post last week.
Facebook has said that a series of checks and balances — involving both software formulas and humans — ensures that stories displayed in the “trending topics” section aren’t biased. In a blog post last week, the company also linked to a 28-page internal document it uses to determine trending topics, after the Guardian published a similar document that was leaked to it.
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