White House Bureau Chief Steve Herman contributed to this story.
Updated July 11, 2019, 6:40 a.m.
SAN FRANCISCO — A who’s who of conservative groups are heading to the White House Thursday to discuss how to deal with reports and stories from social media.
But social media giants Twitter and Facebook will not be there. They reportedly have not been invited.
Few details are available about the White House summit and its attendees, but the event comes amid wide-ranging criticisms of the companies.
Some argue the social media companies are silencing conservative voices. Others say they are not doing enough to protect users from misinformation and offensive posts.
One area of agreement: The tech firms are powerful and control important conduits of information and commerce. There is mounting antitrust scrutiny and calls for looking into whether they should be broken up.
U.S. President Donald Trump is a frequent user of Twitter, using the platform to both tout his administration's work and attack his opponents.
"The White House will be hosting a very big and very important Social Media Summit today," he tweeted ahead of the event. "Would I have become President without Social Media? Yes (probably)!"
Alleged bias against conservative voices
U.S. President Donald Trump has increasingly criticized the three big social media firms — Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — for what he says is censorship and bias against conservative voices.
All three companies have denied targeting conservative users when enforcing their community standards.
In May, the White House asked people to submit stories to a site detailing their experiences.
“Earlier this year the White House launched a tool to allow Americans, regardless of their political views, to share how they have been affected by bias online. After receiving thousands of responses, the president wants to engage directly with these digital leaders in a discussion on the power of social media,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement Tuesday afternoon.
The site is now closed, but a message remains telling visitors that “social media platforms should advance freedom of speech. Yet too many Americans have seen their accounts suspended, banned or fraudulently reported for unclear ‘violations’ of user policies.”
The summit is for “digital leaders” interested in “a robust conversation on the opportunities and challenges of today’s online environment,” the White House said when it announced the event.
Conservative pundits, leaders invited
While the guest list has not been released, those reportedly invited include Florida Republican Party Vice Chair Christian Ziegler and members of conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation and Turning Point USA.
It is important for people to learn about how social media sites moderate content, said Jillian York, director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties organization.
The social media companies are “not getting it right” and are taking down speech that they should not, she said. But the Trump administration’s assessment of conservative bias is not right either, she added.
“The default should be to leave content up,” she said. “Take down should be reserved for truly dangerous circumstances.”
Clara Tsao, a fellow at Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, said under U.S. law, providers of “interactive computer services” are allowed to exclude people from their online communities, to protect an online provider’s content-screening and editorial decisions and to provide standards of decency.
“It’s a tricky problem,” she said. “There is a misunderstanding about how content moderation occurs.”
‘Quarantining’ speech
The social media firms continue to roll out changes to their services to reduce fake accounts and in some cases, make it harder to see posts that have been deemed untrue or offensive.
This week, Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, announced changes to crack down on bullying.
Recently, Reddit “quarantined” a discussion group on its site because of a threat of violence. Users see a warning now before accessing the group.
