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Americans increasingly believe social media companies like Facebook (FB) and Twitter (TWTR) are censoring political speech despite a lack of any hard evidence of such bias.
According to a recent survey of 4,708 U.S. adults conducted by the Pew Research Center between June 16 and June 22, 73% of respondents say that it is somewhat or very likely that social media sites purposely censor political viewpoints they find objectionable.
The survey results come at a fraught time for social networks like Twitter and Facebook as they attempt to clamp down on misinformation and foreign interference ahead of the 2020 elections, and as President Trump continues his attack on the sites via his order to find a way to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Americans of both parties believe there’s bias
While conservative politicians, including Trump, and pundits have been banging the drum the loudest about supposed bias on social media sites, the survey found that a majority of respondents from both sides of the political spectrum believe there is some form of censorship against political viewpoints.
Still, a larger percentage of respondents who identify as Republican or Republican-leaning believe there is a bias, versus Democrat and Democrat-leaning respondents. What’s more, Pew found an increasing percentage of republican and republican leaning Americans surveyed believe social media sites are biased, compared with a reduction in Democrat and Democrat-leading respondents.
There has been a steady stream of complaints regarding social media sites and claims of bias for some time now. During a recent hearing before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law investigating antitrust violations among Big Tech firms, a number of conservative lawmakers pressured Facebook and Google about perceived bias.
But according to Corynne McSherry, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties organization dedicated to protecting online speech, there’s been no real evidence of any partisan political bias from social networks.
“I’m not surprised that many Americans think this, given that there are plenty of political leaders and pundits who are insisting it is true. But as a practical matter, we haven’t seen evidence that social media platforms moderate on a partisan basis,” she told Yahoo Finance.
Instead, McSherry says the EFF has found that traditionally marginalized groups are the ones that are silenced in the U.S., as well as in countries where citizens don’t have First Amendment rights like those e Americans enjoy The group is asking online platforms to provide transparency reports covering when content is taken down and why.