The U.S. Senate Committee of Commerce
has written a letter to Facebook founder and chief executive Mark
Zuckerberg and asked him to appear in Washington to answer allegations
that the social network suppresses certain political content trending
among its users.
The letter, signed by Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., follows a Monday report by Gizmodo
quoting several anonymous ex-Facebook employees who alleged the
company's Trending Topics sidebar gives the news a liberal bent by
"curating" certain topics over others.
"Have Facebook news curators in fact
manipulated the content of the Trending Topics section, either by
targeting news stories related to conservative views for exclusion or by
injecting non-trending content?" the letter asks.
First reported by
Gizmodo, the letter asks Zuckerberg to “arrange for your staff,
including employees responsible for trending topics, to brief committee
staff on this issue.”
'Vice President of Search Tom Stocky addressed the
issue in a statement Tuesday morning, denying any political motives
behind his team's curation and stating that Facebook's curators are held
to guidelines that prohibit any kind of censorship.
Facebook confirmed receipt of the Senate letter but declined to comment further than the blog post.
The Senate committee's letter asks to see
Facebook's guidelines, and requests "a list of all news stories removed
from or injected into the Trending Topics section since January 2014."
"[H]ow many stories have curators excluded
that represented conservative viewpoints or topics of interest to
conservatives? How many stories did curators inject that were not, in
fact, trending?" the letter asks.
The commitee includes Republicans such as
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who both ran for
president, and Democrats such New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker.
Screenshots of the committee's letter are below:
Screenshot of the U.S. Commerce Committee's letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo: IBT 
Screenshot of the U.S. Commerce Committee's letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo: IBT 
Screenshot of the letter from the U.S. Commerce Committee to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo: IBT 
Screenshot of the U.S. Commerce Committee's letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo: IBT
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