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Critics Call White House Social Media Bias Survey A 'Data Collection Ploy'

Saturday May 18, 2019. 04:34 PM , from Slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post:
Venky Ganesan, a partner at technology investor Menlo Ventures, told The Washington Post that the White House's new survey about bias on social media is 'pure kabuki theatre' and an attempt to curry political points with conservatives. He said the Trump administration's repeated accusations that tech companies censor conservative voices are unfounded because even though most Silicon Valley executives are liberal or libertarian, they wouldn't let politics get in the way of their primary goal: making money...
The Internet Association, a trade association representing Facebook, Google and other tech companies, also pushed back on President Trump's repeated accusations that their products are biased against conservatives. The association says the platforms are open and enable the speech of all Americans -- including the president himself. 'That's why the president uses Twitter so much,' said Michael Beckerman, the Internet Association's chief executive. 'He actually used Twitter for this particular announcement, which is perhaps ironic.'

The article adds that the Trump administration 'declined to tell The Washington Post what it planned to do with the data it's amassing.' But on Twitter the New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose argued that the survey 'is just going to be used to assemble a voter file, which Trump will then pay Facebook millions of dollars to target with ads about how biased Facebook is.'

Vice also believes it's a 'craven data collection ploy' and 'an elaborate way of getting people to subscribe to the White House's email list,' adding 'If this whole enterprise feels shady, that's because it is... The site isn't even hosted on a government server, but was created with Typeform, a Spain-based web tool that lets anyone set up simple surveys.' Mashable also notes that the site 'also just so happens to have an absolutely bonkers privacy policy' which includes allowing the White House to edit everything that's submitted.
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