Democrats and Republicans in Congress have quarreled over existence of such bias
By Griffin Connolly | Roll Call
Facebook has brought in a high-profile Washington insider to advise the company on concerns over whether its employees and content-filtering algorithms have an anti-conservative tilt.
Former Arizona GOP Sen. Jon Kyl — now with Capitol Hill lobbying stalwart Covington and Burling — is partnering with the tech giant as lawmakers hammer it for a lack of transparency, not doing enough to combat fake news ahead of the 2016 election, and — if you ask many Republicans — having a built-in bias in its codes and personnel that shuts out conservative voices.
Facebook is also working with civil rights leader Laura Murphy, who will lead a legal audit of the company’s impact on minority communities.
The partnerships, first reported by Axios, come a week after lawmakers traded verbal blows on the issue in a House Judiciary Committee hearing where one Democrat called the notion of Facebook’s anti-conservative bias a “hoax” meant to shore up political support from misinformed voters.
GOP Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and others disagree.
