Free Speech Online: Unfriended

Building Tomorrow
E49 -

Zach Graves and Ryan Radia join us this week to debate if anti-​conservative bias on social media is real or not.

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Hosts
Paul Matzko
Tech & Innovation Editor
Guests
Will Duffield

Will Duffield is a research assistant at Cato’s First Amendment Project.

Zach Graves

Zach Graves works on technology and governance issues, and was the founder and former director of R Street’s Technology & Innovation department. He is currently head of policy at the Lincoln Network and a technology and democracy fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also a fellow at the Internet Law and Policy Foundry and a visiting fellow at the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.

Prior to joining R Street, Zach worked at the Cato Institute and the America’s Future Foundation.

Ryan Radia

Ryan Radia is the Senior Counsel at the Lincoln Network. He is the former associate director of technology studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Radia focuses on adapting law and public policy to the unique challenges of the information age. His research areas include information privacy, intellectual property, electronic speech, competition policy, telecommunications, media regulation, and Internet freedom.

Radia blogs on the Technology Liberation Front, a group technology policy blog dedicated to advancing freedom and liberty in the digital age. His commentary has been referenced by major blogs including Slate, The Atlantic’s Daily Dish, The Washington Post’s Faster Forward, Reason Magazine’s Hit & Run, Techdirt, and Broadband Reports.

Over the past several years, conservative complaints about social media bias have grown. Some conservatives allege that platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter have tweaked their algorithms in ways that effectively downgrade conservative content or that they have “shadow-​banned” conservative voices. In this episode, Paul and Will are joined by Zach Graves and Ryan Radia, both from the Lincoln Network, to discuss to what extent these allegations are legitimate and to weigh subsequent calls for government regulation.

Is news structurally biased? How do conservatives and liberals respond differently to their content being censored online? Is Facebook a legitimate moderator of its’ own platform? What are the bounds of debate in our country? What is a “quality” experience on a social media platform? What is Section 230? What is the Fairness Doctrine?

Further Reading:

Why I’m Suing Twitter, written by Meghan Murphy

The Impossible Job: Inside Facebook’s Struggle to Moderate Two Billion People, written by Jason Koebler and Joseph Kox

Google News results favor left-​leaning media, report finds, written by Cat Hofacker

Related Content:

Free Speech Online, Free Thoughts Podcast

Toward an Uncensored Internet, written by Sonya Mann

For Bad Speech, Is Sunlight Really the Best Disinfectant?, written by Christian Barnard