Mark Zuckerberg, Founder & CEO of Facebook, at the press conference about the e-G8 forum during the 37th G8 summit in Deauville, France.

Facebook was in the national spotlight this week, but the social media giant would probably have preferred to remain in the shadows. The investigation is officially under scrutiny about the abuse of Facebook user’s data and the social media website’s roll in spreading fake news. The joint session of the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees’ questions of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, however, showed that there were a number of other concerns that needed to be addressed.

During Zuckerberg’s seven hour testimony, the CEO was asked about a number of issues. He was questioned if the company’s handling of the Cambridge Analytics affair violated its 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission. Zuckerberg was also asked about Russia’s involvement and fake news. The attempted hacking of campaign candidates’ pages was addressed as well. One of the lines of questioning that got a great deal of attention, however, was the question of whether Facebook has been censoring and removing conservative and Christian content.

Ted Cruz took the lead in this line of questioning when Zuckerberg was in the hot seat. When Zuckerberg carefully danced around the question of whether Facebook was a neutral public forum, Cruz laid out the accusations that conservative and Christian Americans have levied at Facebook. “There are a great many Americans, who I think are deeply concerned that Facebook and other tech companies are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship,” said Cruz. “There have been numerous instances with Facebook.” Among the examples listed by Cruz were the careful suppression of stories about Mitt Romney, the Lois Lerner IRS scandal and Glenn Beck. The “Chick-Fil-A Appreciate Day” page was blocked as well were two dozen Catholic pages. Zuckerberg was also asked about Diamond and Silk, a page with 1.2 million followers whose “content and brand were ‘unsafe to the community.’ To a great many Americans,” Cruz said, “that appears to be a pervasive pattern of political bias.”

Zuckerberg answered, again, with a rather careful non-answer about how it was a valid concern but that he tried to ensure that “[Facebook employees] don’t have any bias in the work that we do.”

Cruz, however, was not satisfied with that answer. He asked if Zuckerberg knew of any ads or pages from Planned Parenthood, MoveOn.org or any Democratic candidate that had been taken down. Zuckerberg admitted he did not know of any such ads or pages that had been blocked.

Zuckerberg insisted several times in his testimony that Facebook was “a platform for all ideas.” Many Christians and conservatives, however, saw his non-answers as proof that Facebook was a platform for only certain types of ideas. It is unclear exactly how this will affect the way people view Facebook, but Cruz’s determination to drag an answer out of Zuckerberg proves that the question of bias is not one that can be simply swept under the rug anymore. People want answers, and they are determined to get them.

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