Brendan Nyhan has a warning for us about Facebook:
cc: everyone who makes simplistic bias claims https://t.co/f2RBIu13lk
— Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan) October 28, 2019
Nyhan’s point is that there’s no particular conservative bias in this list. I’d make a second point: Most of these posts aren’t partisan or political in the first place. Those of us who follow politics as a hobby think that it’s the most important thing in the world, but the rest of the world doesn’t agree. The readership of most political sites is tiny compared to the readership of sports blogs or mommy blogs or gossip blogs.
This is one of the reasons I’m untroubled about Facebook’s decision not to police political advertisements. I’m no fan of Facebook, but that’s mainly because of their dismal record on things like privacy and data portability. When it comes to political influence, however, there’s little reason to think they play an outsize role. On the contrary, their political influence is minuscule compared to Fox News and talk radio and Drudge and the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
We should be concerned about organized foreign influence on Facebook. We should be concerned about Facebook taking an active censorship role. We should be concerned about Facebook allowing third parties to use private information for political purposes. But taking a hands-off approach to political ads? On a scale of one to ten, it’s maybe a two at most. It’s just not worth getting worked up about.
