Facebook currents provides employees with several "bias" training courses and, following accusations that the company exhibits partisanship, they're adding "political bias" to the list.
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO and co-creator of the company's "managing bias" courses, announced the latest addition during an address at the American Enterprise Institute Wednesday, according to The Daily Signal. Other training modules focus on racial, age, gender and national biases.
Facebook's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg speaks with AEI president Arthur C. Brooks during a public conversation on Facebook's work on 'breakthrough innovations that seek to open up the world' at The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research on June 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Allison Shelley/Getty Images)
The tech leader also made clear that Facebook is not interested in becoming a media company, but instead is committed to maintaining its existence as a technology organization.
"We’re not trying to hire journalists and we’re not trying to write news," she said.
The announcement of the new training option comes a little more than one month after a former Facebook worker opened up about his time at the California-based organization, claiming it frequently suppressed news stories important to conservative readers. Following the revelation, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg hosted a forum with several leading conservatives, including Blaze founder Glenn Beck.
"As we think about helping people understand different points of view and being open to different points of view," Sandberg said Wednesday, "we’re dealing with political bias as well going forward."
AEI President Arthur Brooks, who attended Zuckerberg's meeting with conservatives last month, said the development was both "interesting" and "encouraging."
During her address to AEI, Sandberg pushed the fact that Facebook is home to 1.6 billion users and is, subsequently, "a platform for all ideas and all voices." She also noted that Facebook and other Silicon Valley companies are often perceived to be liberal.
But, according to Sandberg, that perception is far from the truth.
"That’s a pretty important accusation and it’s one we take seriously," she said. "It’s also one which frankly rang true to some people because there is concern that Silicon Valley companies have a liberal bias. And so we took it very seriously and did a thorough investigation, and we didn’t find a liberal bias."
However, the belief that the company is bias against conservative interests is not without merit. Facebook has a tendency toward liberalism. As the Daily Signal noted, a Reuters analysis of campaign finance data found that 79 percent of Facebook employee contributions in 2016 have gone to Democrats.
Sandberg stood her ground, regardless. And, it should be noted, Facebook's own internal investigation found the company expressed "no systematic bias."
"We think a lot about diversity at Facebook," Sandberg said at AEI. "It’s something our industry has struggled with, we’ve struggled with. We think to build a product that 1.6 billion people use, you need diversity. And what you really want is cognitive diversity, … intellectual diversity."
In fact, Sandberg said she is so committed to diversity, she encourages employees who disagree with her perspectives to speak up because "you need people with different opinions and you need an environment where people can express those opinions."
"People are not going to speak truth to power unless you make that apparent," she said. "And that’s how we get not just different voices into the company but make sure we’re listening to different voices."
Watch the entire discussion below:
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