Trump campaign manager applauds Nigel Farage’s debunked claims about conservative censorship
Fox's Farage brings right-wing media’s Facebook anti-conservative bias canard to Zuckerberg’s EU Parliament hearing
Published
European Union (EU) Parliament member and Fox News contributor Nigel Farage falsely claimed during an EU Parliament hearing with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that news feed changes implemented by the platform had targeted conservatives and had harmed his page’s engagement numbers. Addressing Zuckerberg, Farage said “you’ve changed [Facebook’s] algorithms, and it has led directly to a very substantial drop in views and engagements for those that have got right-of-center political opinions.” He added that President Donald Trump’s and Farage’s Facebook pages were proof that conservatives had been harmed. Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign manager Brad Parscale subsequently tweeted that he agreed with Farage “that transparency is lacking with the @facebook changes.”
But as BuzzFeed noted, data from social media analytics platform CrowdTangle found that Farage’s page traffic had “little change” in recent months. And Farage’s claim that Facebook is targeting conservatives, a charge right-wing media have led, has been debunked by studies from NewsWhip. Nonetheless, the false right-wing media claim featuring right-wing personalities Diamond and Silk has swept conservative media and led to a congressional hearing. Facebook even gave in to this pressure and is undertaking a review led by a former Republican senator of supposed anti-conservative bias on the platform.
From the May 22 Zuckerberg hearing before the EU Parliament: