Thread by @JuddLegum

1. In this thread, @ggreenwald accused me of deception and stated that it is "obvious" that Facebook is intervening to benefit Democrats.

Glenn supports free speech, as do I. So I'm going to respond in good faith and trust that it will not devolve into name-calling

@ggreenwald 2. I don't need to speculate into whether Facebook is tilting the playing field toward the GOP. I've done reporting on it.

Public policy is set through Facebook's DC office, where Kaplan and two other Republican operative call the shots.

popular.info/p/the-republic…

3. I made calls and spoke to several people who worked there.

"Decisions are made to benefit Republicans because they are paranoid about their reputation among conservative Republicans, particularly Trump," one former Facebook DC employee told me

popular.info/p/the-republic…

4. My reporting is consistent with reporting in the Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed, and elsewhere, that have documented how Kaplan has protected and defended right-wing publishers

wsj.com/articles/faceb…

5. The idea that Sandberg is obviously more influential at Facebook is not at all obvious. There have been multiple reports that Sandberg has been largely sidelined.

nytimes.com/2020/05/16/tec…

6. Further, the idea there can't be bias toward Republicans at Facebook because the overall donations of the staff tilt toward GOP is not a good argument.

The political leanings of a random designer is not really relevant.

But Kaplan, a right-wing operative, makes decisions

7. One of Glenn's main complaints is that they censored the Hunter Biden story in the NYP. They said they were going to reduce distribution, but it spread widely on Facebook. The initial article had over 2.2 million interactions on Facebook, making it one of the most viral of 22.

8. Speaking of virality, the reason why my tweet went viral is not because it was deceptive but because I discovered Kaplan's donation by downloading FEC reports and reading them.

Examining public documents is a good thing, I think.

9. Finally, lest you think Kaplan's donations are irrelevant to the position of the company, Facebook's corporate PAC has donated $7500 this cycle to Perdue

They've donated nothing to Ossoff (who doesn't accept corporate PAC money)

But no one forced them to donate to Perdue

10. In conclusion, I don't think Glenn's argument holds up to scrutiny but I respect his right to advance his argument.