The organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC ) says they have been “vindicated” following the investigation by Facebook over allegations the social media site suppressed conservative news stories.
A statement Tuesday from CPAC and American Conservative Union (ACU) Chief Matt Schlapp said that the Facebook investigation, which reportedly “found no evidence of political bias,” shows something went wrong. The group points to the rest of the letter from Facebook to Senator [crscore]John Thune[/crscore] as proof.
“ACU’s has been vindicated,” the statement read. “This issue is still unresolved even after these admissions of wrongdoing by Facebook. We will continue to press this matter until we are satisfied that conservatives will be fairly treated.” (RELATED: CPAC Matt Schlapp Declines Invite To Facebook Meeting)
“Facebook has admitted to harming CPAC, but they have not called us to apologize, and they have failed to explain what they did,” Schlapp added. “Sen. Thune has done the right thing to press them and we urge Congress to vigorously scrutinize Facebook to prevent deceptive practices and false advertising in the future.”
The fourth paragraph of the letter from Facebook admits that, “At the same time, as you would expect with an inquiry of this nature, our investigation could not exclude the possibility of isolated improper actions or unintentional bias in the implementation of our guidelines or policies.”
Adding, “As part of our commitment to continually improve our products and to minimize risks where human judgment is involved, we are making a number of changes.”
The letter from Facebook specifically addresses CPAC and admits to omitting one topic on the opening day in 2016. “In 2016, although topics related to CPAC were accepted on other days of the conference, one topic related to CPAC itself was not accepted on its first day, March 2, 2016,” the letter states. “Our investigation concluded that this decision was likely the result of the fact that on that day — the day after the Super Tuesday electoral contests — reviewers accepted at least 15 topics related to the Republican presidential primary… Given the history of acceptance of CPAC as a topic in 2015 and on most days in 2016, we do not believe any bias can be inferred.”
