Trump claims social media is run by the 'radical left' - does he have a point?

In a presidency defined by executive orders, it was only a matter of time before Donald Trump took aim at social media companies.

On Thursday, the US president said he would sign an executive order targeting social media after Twitter started to label his tweets with fact-checking links.

According to the President, the motives for Twitter’s move are clear: censorship. With an election looming, Twitter’s actions solidify Trump's convictions that social media networks are controlled by “the radical left.”

In response, Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey claimed the company was not acting as an “arbiter of truth”; rather, it was aiming to “connect the dots” of conflicting statements so people can come to their own conclusions. “We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally,” Dorsey tweeted.

So who is right? Do social media companies harbour an anti-Conservative bias, or are they simply doing their job?

According to Chloe Colliver, head of the digital research unit at the ISD think tank, the perceived political biases must be analysed on two fronts: the algorithms at the heart of social media firms and the people shaping the decisions.

There is not enough data, she says, to suggest the codes that determine which posts get flagged as egregious are inherently biased, though she recommends creating a sandbox in which these alogrithms can be tested.

But things get more complicated when it comes to decision makers. “If you look at individual decisions being made on political leaders, the response by companies has overwhelmingly been sporadic and patchy across the political spectrum,” Colliver says.

It is a perceived issue that Trump has highlighted frequently, with his supporters often singling out individuals for alleged bias.

The latest target is Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of site integrity. In recent days, Roth has received death threats after social media users uncovered posts he sent criticising the president.

"From their bogus 'fact check' of @realDonaldTrump to their 'head of site integrity' displaying his clear hatred towards Republicans, Twitter's blatant bias has gone too far," tweeted Republican National Chairman Chair Ronna McDaniel.

This isn't a new accusation. Last year the White House unveiled a "Tech Bias Reporting tool" meant primarily to highlight cases in which conservatives believed they were being silenced

A year before that, non-profit firm Freedom Watch filed a lawsuit that accused the likes of Twitter, Google and Facebook of favouring liberal voices.

The two-year legal battle ended in failure this week after the claims were dismissed. Despite the loss, many other allegations of liberal bias remain.

US senator Josh Hawley called a conservative-led review of alleged bias at Facebook a “smokescreen” after the report concluded that it had found no evidence of bias inside the company.

Google has also come under attack. Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed the search engine promotes news articles critical of his administration while reducing the prominence of outlets more friendly to him. His allies point to the fact that 81pc of political donations by Google employees were made to Democractic politicians.

However, a lawsuit filed by former Google employee James Damore which alleged that Google was biased against conservative employees, was dismissed earlier this year. Google has also denied the allegations.

Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, has faced similar claims of algorithmic bias by Republican politicians. He went as far as acknowledging the issue in 2018, when he said Twitter is a “left-leaning” company.

“All decisions that platforms take have some political ramifications,” says Ellen Judson, a researcher at think tank Demos, “fact checking is the newest version of that debate.”

“Platforms are growing more and more relevant to political discourse,” she says.

The debate over bias was revived earlier this month when Facebook announced the members of its new oversight board.

The 20 initial members of the board will function as a “Supreme Court” for Facebook and Instagram, hearing appeals over decisions by Facebook on whether to delete content on its apps.

The appointment of former Guardian editor in chief Alan Rusbridger to the board enraged conservative politicians in the UK.

The board does include several conservatives, but Damian Green, a Conservative MP and member of the Commons’ Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, said it “fails miserably to provide confidence in its political balance.”

The development of systems like Facebook’s oversight board are an attempt by social media companies to become more transparent on their inner workings.

Attempts like this are vital, Judson says, as a “black box” approach to moderation and algorithms where rules and decisions are hidden can cause claims of bias to proliferate.

“Platforms are evolving their responses in real-time and so without that transparency along the way, people may struggle to keep up,” she says.

Ultimately, while Silicon Valley tech-companies are undoubtedly left-leaning, how much that impacts their content decisions remains up for debate.

For Charlie Beckett, founding director of the think tank Polis, the extent to which an executive order could harm social media companies will be limited, because of the way in which it has served to amplify Trump’s views already.

“I can't really imagine Trump having success with his strategy of disrupting normal, political process without social media,” he says. “I think he owes them big time.”