Wasn't Facebook caught scrubbing positive conservative news stories in the past? I could see secret deals between facebook and political parties regarding the consumers of their "free" internet.
Shortly after, this happened: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/29/facebook-...
Which is why they shouldn't be trusted as if they were a neutral party providing a utility - they're demonstrably not. Even if they intended to be, the temptation to wield the power they have towards some financial or political end would inevitably be too great to resist.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everyt...
Not only is this not against the law, it's either illegal or highly discouraged not to do this everywhere in the world.
Yes but it wasn't because of a secret deal (and would likely never be such). SF/SV just leans more liberal and its conservatives are generally libertarians. So, natural biases were likely the only cause and why pay for what you can get for free?
I think every Democrat would agree the GOP being killed off by the Libertarians would be a good thing simply because it narrows the scope to fighting over financial/economic issues and related civil rights issues. Rather than fighting over things like abortion and having the GOP quietly use building codes and other tricks to kill abortion clinics anyway.
"Free" (gratis) will never be worth "free" (libre).
edit: ok, "NSA Skinner box" may be a bit hyperbolic, but Facebook is still a PRISM participant that engages in emotional manipulation and ideological filtering, and they have a deeply vested interest in surveillance, profiling and correlating user data.
Why would anyone trust them to act as a gateway for the internet? Ever?