It is impossible to regulate free speech on the Internet.

We know that an overwhelming majority of technology entrepreneurs subscribe

to a liberal ideology. Despite the claims by companies such as Google, I believe
that political biases affect how these companies operate. As my colleague Nicol
Turner-Lee explains here, “while computer programmers may not create
algorithms that start out being discriminatory, the collection and curation of
social preferences eventually can become adaptive algorithms that embrace
societal biases.” If we accept that the implicit bias of developers could
unintentionally lead their algorithms to be discriminatory, then, with the same
token, we should also expect the political biases of such programmers to lead to
discriminatory algorithms that favor their ideology.

Empirical evidence support this intuition; By analyzing a dataset consisting of 10.1

million U.S. Facebook users, a 2014 study demonstrated that liberal users are less
likely than their conservative counterparts to get exposed to news content that
oppose their political views. Another analysis of Yahoo! search queries concluded
that “more right-leaning a query it is, the more negative sentiments can be found
in its search results.”

The calls for regulating social media and technology companies are politically
motivated. Conservatives who support these policies argue that their freedom of
speech is being undermined by social media companies who censor their voice.
Conservatives who celebrate constitutional originalism should remember that the
First Amendment protects against censorship by government. Social media
companies are all private businesses with discretion over the content they wish to
promote, and any effort by government to influence what social media platforms
promote risks violating the First Amendment.

Moreover, the current position of the conservatives are in direct contrast to their
positions on “Fairness Doctrine”. As my colleague Tom Wheeler explains here,
“when the Fairness Doctrine was repealed in the Reagan Administration, it was
hailed by Republicans as a victory for free speech.” Republicans should apply the
same standard to both traditional media and the modern day social media. If they
believe requiring TV and radio channels to present a fair balance of both sides is a
violation of free speech, how can they favor imposing the exact same
requirement on social media platforms?

Furthermore, the government intervention that they propose is potentially more

damaging than the problem they want to solve. If conservatives believe that
certain businesses have enough power and influence to infringe on their freedom
of speech, how can they propose government, a much more powerful and
influential entity, to enter this space? While President Trump’s administration and
a Republican controlled Congress may set policies that would favor conservatives
in the short term, they will also be setting a very dangerous precedent which
would allow later governments to interfere with these companies and other news
organizations in future. If they believe that today’s Twitter has enough power and
will to censor them, they should be terrified of allowing tomorrow’s government
to do so.Others argue that social media and technology companies should
become more ideologically diverse and inclusive by hiring more conservatives. I
believe in the value of ideological and intellectual diversity. As an academic, I
experience it on a daily basis through my interaction with students and colleagues
from many different backgrounds. This helps me polish my ideas and create new
and exciting ones. New ideas are more likely to emerge and flourish in an
intellectually diverse environment.

However, measuring and mandating ideological diversity is impossible. Ideology is

a spectrum, not binary. Rarely anyone agrees with all positions of a single party
even if they are a member of it. Although in an extremely polarized political
environment, Americans are increasingly favoring the more extreme ends of the
political ideologies in both parties, many of the Republicans do not agree with
current immigration policies of President Trump, just like many Democrats who
do not agree that ICE should be abolished. Unlike other forms of diversity that
promote gender, racial, and sexual equality in the work force, political ideology
cannot be categorized within a limited number of groups. While we can look at
the racial composition of the employees of a company and demand that they hire
a representative sample of all races, it is not possible to demand for a
representative sample of political ideologies in the workforce.

Acting to increase ideological diversity would be impossible. A candidate would

hesitate to disclose party affiliation to an employer who may use it to make hiring
decisions. What are the chances that a candidate tries to conceal a conservative
ideology during an interview for a six-figure-salary job in an overtly liberal Silicon
Valley company? If another company wants to become more diverse by hiring
conservatives, would liberal candidates be inclined to present as conservative?

The political bias of social media companies becomes more concerning as more
Americans turn to these platforms for receiving news and effectively turn them
into news organizations. Despite these concerns, I believe that we should accept
such bias as a fact and refrain from regulating social media platforms or
mandating them to attain a politically diverse workforce.