Glenn Beck Is Disturbed By The Facebook Witch Hunt

Glenn Beck Is Disturbed By The Facebook Witch Hunt (Image: MGN)

Apparently Glenn Beck has come forward and talked about what his feelings were about the secret meeting between head Republicans and the Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. To make a long story short he said that was “deeply disturbed” by the meeting.

Recently allegations have been thrown at Facebook for censoring conservative stories on their famous Trending Topics. Immediately bringing to question the motives behind Mark Zuckerberg and his company, so in response Zuckerberg offered to have a sit down meeting the some of the heads of Republican media to discuss it. Glenn Beck had a lot to say about the meeting but a small section described how the majority of the meeting seemed to be accusing of Facebook of all kinds of allegations, without bringing proof to back it up. Beck said, “We were there because of this ONE accusation on Trending Topics.”

Here is a section of what he had to say about the meeting.

“I looked around the room, I heard the complaints, I listened to the perspectives, and not a single person in the room shared evidence of any wrongdoing. Maybe they had some, but it wasn’t shared. They discussed how Facebook’s organic reach and changes in algorithms has impacted their business. While at the same time admitting that Huffington Post has been struggling with the same issues. I heard people discuss community standards, pages being shut down, posts being removed — and I do believe that happens and it’s something Facebook could do better, and I hope they will — but we were not there because of that. We were there because of this ONE accusation on Trending Topics.”

Beck also went on to say that it felt like the “Salem Witch Trials,” that the conservative heads were not interested in hearing the facts they were there to crucify the company for what they had done.

“The overall tenor, to me, felt like the Salem Witch Trial: ‘Facebook, you must admit that you are screwing us, because if not, it proves you are screwing us.”

Either way, you look at it, the issue of Trending Topics on Facebook needs to be addressed. At the moment, there isn't any solid evidence on whether or not Facebook, or it's employees, were suppressing conservative news. Yet, as Glenn Beck goes on to say, the idea of Trending Topics is relatively new for Facebook and it certainly has some kinks that need to be worked out.

“Now I want to be very clear on this point. This issue, the Trending Topics issue, the reason we are supposed to be up in arms, is a relatively new product that Facebook readily admits is far from perfect. Maybe later we will go into the details of the multiple products and how each one MAY be impacted by an unconscious bias — and how Trending topics in particular MAY be vulnerable to manipulation — but the reason I went to Facebook was not to find out whether there was a small issue, but to see whether there was a real issue. A top-down initiative from management to marginalize conservative voices. We can, and will, debate the merits of some of the complaints against Facebook, but, in my opinion, there is no evidence of a top-down initiative to silence conservative voices.”

Although, Glenn Beck is confident that the Trending Topics issue is just that, a small issue that needs to be perfect, a lot of other high-level conservative figures are ready to give the execution sentence if Facebook doesn't fix the problem.

Mark Zuckerberg's comments at the meeting were that “There is only one Facebook and one path forward: We are an open platform.”

Either way, I'm sure that after the meeting with the conservative elites we will see some changes with Facebook happening probably sooner than you think.