46 There have been many assessments by journalists as well as academics discussing the evidence surrounding this persistent theory—for example, Danielle Keats Citron and Mary Ann Franks, “The Internet as a Speech Machine and Other Myths Confounding Section 230 Reform,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 2020, no. 3 (2020), https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol2020/iss1/3; “Despite Cries of Censorship, Conservatives Dominate Social Media,” Politico, October 27, 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/26/censorship-conservatives-social-media-432643; Siva Vaidhyanathan, “Why Conservatives Allege Big Tech Is Muzzling Them,” The Atlantic, July 28, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/conservatives-pretend-big-tech-biased-against-them/594916; Mathew Ingram, “Republicans Still Convinced Facebook and Twitter Are Biased Against Them,” Columbia Journalism Review, July 18, 2018, https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/tech-biased-against-conservatives.php; Nitasha Tiku, “Leaked Audio Reveals Google’s Efforts to Woo Conservatives,” Wired, December 10, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/leaked-audio-reveals-googles-efforts-woo-conservatives; Nicholas Thompson and Fred Vogelstein, “Inside the Two Years That Shook Facebook—and the World,” Wired, February 12, 2018, https:/www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuck erberg-2-years-of-hell; Paul M. Barrett and J. Grant Sims, “False Accusation: The Unfounded Claim That Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives,” New York University, February 2021, https://bhr.stern.nyu.edu/bias-report-release-page. One ongoing challenge with assessing it empirically is that access to data on both moderation and curation algorithms is limited by technology platforms.
47 Ferenc Huszár et al., “Algorithmic Amplification of Politics on Twitter,” PNAS 119, no. 1 (December 21, 2021): e2025334119, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2025334119.
48 “An Update on Senator Kyl’s Review of Potential Anti-conservative Bias,” Meta, June 22, 2020, https://about.fb.com/news/2019/08/update-on-potential-anti-conservative-bias; Kerry Flynn, “Facebook Commissioned a Study of Alleged Anti-conservative Bias. Here’s What It Found,” CNN Business, August 20, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/20/media/facebook-anti-conservative-bias-report/index.html; Jon Kyl, “Why Conservatives Don’t Trust Facebook,” Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2019, Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20190820161311/https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-conservatives-dont-trust-facebook-11566309603.
49 Thomas Kaplan and Sarah Almukhtar, “How Trump Is Outspending Every 2020 Democrat on Facebook,” New York Times, June 11, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/21/us/politics/trump-2020-facebook-ads.html.
50 Ferenc Huszár et al., “Algorithmic Amplification of Politics on Twitter,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 119, no. 1 (December 21, 2021), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2025334119.
51 Reem Nadeem, “Most Americans Think Social Media Sites Censor Political Viewpoints,” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, August 19, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/08/19/most-americans-think-social-media-sites-censor-political-viewpoints.
52 Renée DiResta, “How the Creator Economy Is Incentivizing Propaganda,” NOEMA, June 7, 2023, https://www.noemamag.com/the-new-media-goliaths.
53 Liam Stack, “Trump Wants Your Tales of Social Media Censorship and Your Contact Info,” New York Times, May 16, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/us/donald-trump-twitter-facebook-youtube.html.
54 Oliver Darcy, “‘Circus Show’ Summit: Trump Delivers Meandering Speech to His Digital Army of Supporters at the White House,” CNN Business, July 12, 2019, https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/11/tech/trump-speech-social-media-summit/index.html.
55 Kirsten Grind and John D. McKinnon, “Facebook, Twitter Turn to Right-Leaning Groups to Help Referee Political Speech,” Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-twitter-solicit-outside-groups-often-on-the-right-to-referee-political-speech-11546966779.
56 Craig Silverman and Jane Lytvynenko, “A New Racist Campaign Against Kamala Harris Is Taking Shape,” BuzzFeed, June 28, 2019, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/kamala-harris-black-citizenship.
57 Ben Schreckinger, “Trump’s Culture Warriors Go Home.” Politico, November/December 2018, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/10/29/trump-cernovich-milo-yiannopoulos-richard-spencer-alt-right-2018-221916.
58 “Widower Asks Twitter to Delete Trump’s Conspiracy Tweets,” NBC News, May 27, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/twitter-fact-checks-trump-s-misleading-tweet-mail-voting-n1215151.
59 Elizabeth Dwoskin, “Twitter Labels Trump’s Tweets with a Fact Check for the First Time,” Washington Post, May 27, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/26/trump-twitter-label-fact-check.
