Tom Stocky, responsible for Facebook’s “Trending News” system, has been revealed as a maximum donor to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Federal Election Commission records show that he contributed $2,700 to the Clinton campaign on October 26, 2015, the maximum amount that can be given by an individual candidate during a primary.
The news comes after allegations that Facebook has been suppressing conservative voices on its site whilst amplifying movements such as Black Lives Matter.
Stocky, who is Facebook’s vice president of product management, last Monday denied allegations that he had been deliberately manipulating the trending data.
“Facebook does not allow or advise our reviewers to systematically discriminate against sources of any ideological origin and we’ve designed our tools to make that technically not feasible,” he claimed. “At the same time, our reviewers’ actions are logged and reviewed, and violating our guidelines is a fireable offense.”
Meanwhile the senate have confirmed that they will be investigating claims of Facebook bias after Republican Senator John Thune sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking him to explain the company’s editorial practices.
An investigation by The Hill also revealed that Clinton has received the most donations by Facebook employees to any presidential candidate, surpassing second place Marco Rubio’s $16,000 by nearly $100,000.
Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos has meanwhile challenged Mark Zuckerburg to a one-on-one live interview over a Facebook live stream to discuss the allegations.
You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at ben@yiannopoulos.net
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