It's not every day that conservative leaders fly across the country to take a meeting with a guy who supports gay marriage. A guy who says undocumented immigrants should receive legal status. A leader who rigorously defends encryption and invests in clean energy technology.
It's rarer still that they leave such a meeting with nothing but positive things to say about it.
But that's what happened this week as more than a dozen conservative thought leaders descended upon Silicon Valley to meet with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The meeting was sparked by a report alleging Facebook staffers suppressed conservative content in its Trending Topics feature. Facebook has said no such bias exists, but conservatives wanted a chance to air their grievances and seek reassurance.
Afterward, based on the reactions of those in attendance, the company would be safe in saying "mission accomplished." The much-hyped meeting resulted in a wave of positive tweets, Facebook posts, and other responses from all involved. Conservative commentator S.E. Cupp called it a "very productive meeting." Brent Bozell, president of the conservative group Media Research Center, said, "Facebook understands there is a problem. And I think from the very top there is a genuine desire to see it restored." On Medium talk radio icon Glenn Beck penned an essay praising Zuckerberg's "thoughtfulness, his directness, and what seemed to be his earnest desire to 'connect the world.'"
Whether the meeting will lead to any actual changes at Facebook is still an open question, and the company declined to comment on future plans. But one thing is for sure: it proved that Zuckerberg is one of the most skilled political figures of our time.
Not in a "Zuckerberg 2016!" "Long Live the Innovation Party" kind of way. Not in the least. Rather, the meeting was, above all, a political move for Facebook and one that appears to have worked. Yes, maintaining the appearance of neutrality will be key to Facebook's longterm success. But in the near term, the company needs to rebuild trust with conservatives, a crucial community of users, particularly in a contentious election year. And in just 90 minutes Zuckerberg managed to quell attendees' suspicions about Facebook's underlying motives, proving just how powerful a position he now finds himself in politically.
Zuckerberg is neither a straightforward media mogul nor a politician. He is, first and foremost, the creator and leader of one of the most successful businesses of this generation. He is a capitalist icon, and for free market conservatives, it gets mighty tricky trying to justify interfering with the way he runs his business. Beck said as much in his essay: "They are a private-owned company with investors who can decide what is right for them."
"I felt they approached it with a really humble attitude," said Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the group Tea Party Patriots, who attended the meeting. "They’re a company that has a really good tech platform, and they're always looking for ways to improve it and be better and be innovative."
But what makes the situation even more complicated for conservatives is what exactly they should ask for from Facebook. Openness? Okay. Balance? Sure. But how could Facebook, whose algorithms make billions of what are ultimately editorial decisions every day ever possibly prove it's being fair? How could Facebook ever show all its work?
The answer is, it can't. And so, the question comes down to trust, trust that Facebook will do right by users of every political affiliation. Zuckerberg has been playing the trust game with users for more than a decade, on issues ranging from privacy to how its technology decides what to show more than a billion users in their News Feeds at any given moment. We won't tell you how everything works, Facebook has in effect told users. Just trust us to do right by you.
Conservatives felt like Facebook broke that trust. So what better way to repair the rift than with a high-profile meeting where conservatives feel their voices are being heard? It's politics at its finest. The beer summit of Silicon Valley, if you will. And if early reviews are to be believed, it worked.
"One of the biggest companies in the world said this means enough to us to stop what we’re doing to have this conversation," said Zac Moffatt, Mitt Romney's former digital director and founder of the digital firm Targeted Victory. "If you don't have a dialogue with these companies, it’s too late once you already need them."
There's a word for this strategy in politics: pandering. Yes, the word has a negative connotation, but that doesn't make it an inherently bad thing. Indeed, sometimes, this type of political calculation unearths truly important issues in a political campaign. The issue of opioid addiction, for instance, was only elevated because it disproportionately impacts New Hampshire's coveted primary voters. If Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders hadn't been vying for a win in Michigan, how much would we have heard about the poisoned water crisis in Flint?
And so this spotlight may also push Facebook to think harder about political bias. That's certainly what the attendees are hoping. "This project is a long time growing and to think it'll be solved in 90 minutes is crazy," Moffatt says. But if Facebook doesn't take specific actions to address bias and soon, he says, "it'll just exacerbate the issue."
Of course, no number of meetings will likely ever change Zuckerberg's own political beliefs, the beliefs of his liberal employees, or the fact that, as Zuckerberg put it in his post about the meeting, "Silicon Valley has a reputation for being liberal." And Zuckerberg still hasn't admitted Facebook has done anything wrong, except to say that the company is still investigating these accusations.
Still, the meeting could result in little changes, such as the number of conservative news sources Facebook consults for its national news Trending Topics or the ideological diversity of its staff. And the good news for Zuckerberg is that no one will ever blame him for aspiring to be more neutral. In fact, Facebook will likely be better off if people of different ideologies believe the company is trying its hardest to remain nonpartisan. That's not just good politics. That's good business.
