共和党人质疑Facebook和Google压制保守派言论

本次针对四大巨头的听证会的主题是反托拉斯，而共和党人却集中在有关Google和Facebook是否压制了保守派言论的方面提问。他们指控说，这些平台可能正在通过改变其算法的方式，压制保守的言论，Facebook的数千个签约内容创作者可能对保守派有偏见。谷歌首席执行官桑达尔·皮查伊（Sundar Pichai）说，该公司致力于中立。

Facebook旗下的研究工具Crowd Tangle的数据显示，尽管Facebook承认其员工群体大多数偏向自由派，但该平台上最受欢迎的帖子往往来自于保守派的媒体和人物。该公司的高级公共政策官员乔尔·卡普兰（Joel Kaplan）是共和党人。《华尔街日报》今年早些时候的报道称，卡普兰的团队已经审查了Facebook核心新闻推送算法的变化，就是为了审查算法的变化会不会导致在无意间压制保守派的声音。不过，委员会的共和党人仍然怀疑平台对保守派存在偏见。

共和党人还批评Facebook和Google都删除了一个在平台上很受欢迎的视频。视频中一个医生发表了误导性言论，称预防Covid-19不需要戴口罩，而羟氯喹可以治愈Covid-19。

小组委员会主席民主党众议员Rep. David Cicilline (D., R.I.) 指责Facebook放任该视频获得了2000万次观看。但共和党成员表示，下架该视频是大型科技公司压制言论自由的例子。皮查伊（Pichai）和扎克伯格（Zuckerberg）做出了类似的回应，称视频中的错误信息可能会导致人们受到伤害。


While the subject of the hearing was antitrust, Republicans focused on allegations that Google and Facebook are undermining conservatives.
Among the allegations were that the platforms might be altering their algorithms to suppress conservative speech, and that Facebook’s thousands of contract content moderators might be biased. Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said the company was committed to neutrality.

While Facebook has acknowledged that its employee base skews liberal, the most popular posts on the platform tend to be from conservative media outlets and figures, according to data from Facebook-owned research tool Crowd Tangle. The company’s top public-policy official, Joel Kaplan, is a Republican, and reporting from earlier this year by the Journal showed that Mr. Kaplan’s team had vetted changes to Facebook’s core newsfeed algorithm for changes that might even inadvertently suppress conservative voices. Still, Republicans on the committee raised suspicions that such bias is occurring.

Republicans also criticized both Facebook and Google for taking down a popular video in which doctors made misleading or false claims that mask wearing was unnecessary to combat the coronavirus and that Hydroxychloroquine could cure the disease.

While subcommittee chairman Rep. David Cicilline (D., R.I.) faulted Facebook for allowing the video to rack up 20 million views, Republican members said the takedown was a worrisome example of big tech squelching free speech. Both Mr. Pichai and Mr. Zuckerberg gave similar responses to such allegations, saying the misinformation in the video could lead to people being hurt.
  source

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