Facebbook is liberal because it’s employees are mostly liberal. It’s employees trend young and young people are the driving force behind socialist Bernie Sanders, for instance. The median age of Facebook’s workforce is only 29 years old. Facebook is based in arguably in the most liberal city in the United States, San Francisco, an official sanctuary city that refuses to honor federal requests to hold on to people found to be in the country illegally. There is no denying that Facebook employees are liberal.
Is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg a liberal? In a recent speech he seemed to be expressing his disagreement with the positions of Donald Trump, but so do some Republicans:
“I hear fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing people they label as ‘others,’” Zuckerberg said, never referring to Trump by name. “I hear them calling for blocking free expression, for slowing immigration, for reducing trade, and in some cases, even for cutting access to the internet.”
Conservatives believe he is a liberal for plenty of reasons. He started and funds an organization called Fwd.us which openly bashes Trump and Cruz for their immigration positions:
Of course, Zuckerberg may also be just a pragmatist and a proponent of what is in the best interest of Facebook. Facebook needs the best tech people in the world and they are all not in the United States.
Some say that Zuckerberg is a globalist, which is something many conservatives resist, except for the conservatives that are executives in multi-national corporations. Globalist’s don’t care about fair trade, because arguing this could start a trade war which is not in their corporate interests. They want unhindered immigration and they don’t want much done on illegal immigration because that could end up putting more limits on legal immigration too. Zuckerberg, falls into this category not just because he’s a liberal, but because it is in his company’s best interest.
But Zuckerberg is liberal on hot-topic social issues too.
There was once a claim that Zuckerberg donated almost a billion dollars to Planned Parenthood, an organization that many Republican’s despise because of its pro-abortion agenda. What actually happened is that Zuckerberg donated $500 million in Facebook shares (Now possibly worth a billion!) to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, an organization that funds some liberal initiatives, but is not overtly political.
Mark Zuckerberg openly supports gay marriage, a liberal position that is supported by many younger conservatives as well. A Pew Research poll conducted in 2014 showed that 61% of young Republicans favor same-sex marriage. That’s likely much higher now considering that same sex marriage is now legal. In June, 2015 the Supreme Court ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage.
After the Paris attacks by Muslim extremists Zuckerberg felt it necessary to post that Facebook supports Muslims:
If you’re a Muslim in this community, as the leader of Facebook I want you to know that you are always welcome here and that we will fight to protect your rights and create a peaceful and safe environment for you.
Many conservatives find this an unsettling, but common knee-jerk reaction of liberals, every time radical Muslims commit an act of terror. Conservatives suspect that many Muslims around the world sympathies with the so-called extremest and that leaders, political and corporate, shouldn’t assume that most Muslims are just like us, freedom loving and peaceful. For instance, according to a Pew survey, a third of U.S. Muslims support Al-Qaeda and that more than a third of U.S. Muslims think Islamic extremism is okay!
But, just because Mark Zuckerberg is a social liberal and a corporate globalist and that his employees trend liberal does not mean that Facebook is biased against conservatives, at least not as a corporate strategy. In a post from conservative Donald Trump hating Glenn Beck, following his attendance of the Zuckerberg Conservative summit this week, Beck had these thoughts which support Zuckerberg:
In my opinion, there is no evidence of a top-down initiative to silence conservative voices.
Based on our research and my personal experience with Facebook, I believe they are acting in good faith and share some very deep, fundamental principles with people who believe in the principles of liberty and freedom of speech.
Zuckerberg denies that Facebook is in any way biased. Based on various reports, we know that some within Facebook have suppressed conservative views. The reason Zuckerberg met with some conservatives is because a former employee working on the news trends spoke about how they purposely suppress conservative news trends and artificially raise liberal trends such as Black Lives Matters.
Some say that this is just the tip of the iceberg:
“Facebook is intentionally suppressing our traffic and hiding our stories in people’s newsfeeds,” said Patty McMurray, co-founder of the group 100% Fed Up. “[The censorship] has everything to do with immigration,” McMurray said.
“Every time I threaten to take legal action [against Facebook’s censorship], I get the same response: ‘Glitch. Mistake. Sorry.’” said anti-amnesty filmmaker Dennis Michael Lynch. “It is total censorship, and there is no question it is an effort by those at Facebook who want to muffle the sounds of people like myself.”
Yet more broadly, the activists say that Facebook suppresses their groups in multiple ways: such as unsubscribing followers, hiding the groups’ content from their followers’ newsfeeds, deleting posts, and suspending the advocates’ ability to post on their own Facebook pages.
McMurray says she was suspended from posting on her Facebook group’s page for a whole month because another Facebook user published a post on her group’s page. The outside post was critical of unassimilated Muslim migrants who push for the implementation of Sharia law in Western countries.
Facebook is the world’s largest platform of communication and news with 1.65 billion users, and as such has a tremendous influence. It has the right to be biased against conservatives but if it was open about this it might turn-off millions in its user base. So it’s simply smart business not to be biased, but with tens of thousands of employees that trend liberal, conservatives have a right to be watchful that their voices are not being silenced. Most assuredly, Zuckerberg would not want Facebook to be thought of as “Fakebook” — a jab that Rush Limbaugh frequently uses.
Mark Zuckerberg at least in Beck’s longing eyes is not biased and wants Facebook to not be biased against conservatives. Because of its potential for significant influence let’s hope that’s true. It’s not just in Facebook’s interest, it’s in the interest of the world.