Facebook was taking hits from the left and the right over the release Tuesday (Aug. 20) of the findings, to date, of a review of conservative concerns about a liberal bias in content choices on the social media site. 

The audit was conducted by a former Republican senator polling conservatives about their issues. But that didn't please one current Republican senator and harsh critic of social media. But neither did it please a group on the opposite side of the issue. 

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who is inarguably Big Tech's biggest Senate critic, is definitely concerned about potential anti-conservative bias by Big Tech, but he is no fan of the audit, which Facebook launched last year after CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled on the Hill over the bias issue. 

“Merely asking somebody to listen to conservatives’ concerns isn’t an ‘audit,’ it’s a smokescreen disguised as a solution," said Hawley. "Facebook should conduct an actual audit by giving a trusted third party access to its algorithm, its key documents, and its content moderation protocols. Then Facebook should release the results to the public.” Hawley spoke at a White House meeting of conservative bloggers, where he agreed that their voices were being discriminated against on social media. 

Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, agreed with Hawley that the audit missed the mark, but for different reasons. Gupta said the audit was "a make-believe solution in search of a phantom problem." 

"Rather than allowing baseless allegations of so-called anti-conservative bias to distract them, Facebook officials should focus on the civil and human rights problems and white supremacist propaganda overrunning its platform," said Gupta, adding that releasing a "face-saving" report (or in this case Facebook saving) just didn't cut it.  

The divide between Gupta and Hawley reflects the one between the two parties, where Republicans say conservative bias is a legitimate threat while Democrats call it a distraction from the issue of racist and nationalistic hate speech that they argue Republicans don't do enough to discourage, or in the case of the President, actively encourage.  

The conference has joined with over four dozen other civil rights groups to call on Big TEch to do more to reduce hate speech and other conduct that "endangers" marginalized communities.  

Such criticism notwithstanding, Facebook has signaled it will continue to "examine, and where necessary adjust, our own policies and practices in the future," conceding that "we will inevitably make some bad [content] calls, some of which may appear to strike harder at conservatives." 

In advance of the President's reported meeting with conservatives and others Thursday (July 11) over social media—which has been accused of bias against conservative speech—a large group of academics and civil society groups are warning against too heavy handed reform of Sec. 230.

That is the Communications Decency Act section of the Telecommunications Act that exempts platforms from liability for removing objectionable content.

Related: Court Upholds Edge Protection from Third-Party Liability

Democrats and Republicans in Congress have signaled that liability protection should be sunset. Even the author of the provision has suggested it should go.

Meanwhile the President and his conservative allies have suggested the government needs to step in to ensure edge providers aren't censoring them, or make them stop if they are.

"As civil society organizations, academics, and other experts who study the regulation of user-generated content, we value the balance between freely exchanging ideas, fostering innovation, and limiting harmful speech," they said. "Because this is an exceptionally delicate balance, Section 230 reform poses a substantial risk of failing to address policymakers’ concerns and harming the internet overall."

Related: CCIA Says White House Meeting Is Intended to Intimidate

They issued a set of principles that they said should guide any potential review of Sec. 230:

Principle #1: "Content creators bear primary responsibility for their speech and actions."

Principle #2: "Any new intermediary liability law must not target constitutionally protected
speech."

Principle #3: "The law shouldn’t discourage Internet services from moderating content. They argue that "exposing themselves to increased liability; penalizing them for imperfect content moderation or second-guessing their decision-making will only discourage them from trying in the first place."

Principle #4: "Sec. 230 does not, and should not, require 'neutrality.' Calling social media sites publishers, they say that 'every publication decision will necessarily prioritize some content at the expense of other content.' But edge providers have argued they are not publishers, simply hosts and facilitators of online forums." 

Principle #5: "We need a uniform national legal standard (no patchwork of state liability laws)."

Principle #6: "We must continue to promote innovation on the Internet....Section 230 encourages innovation in Internet services, especially by smaller services and start-ups who need the most protection from potentially crushing liability. The law must continue to protect intermediaries not merely from liability, but from having to defend against excessive, often-meritless suits—what one court called 'death by ten thousand duck-bites.'”

Principle #7: "Section 230 should apply equally across a broad spectrum of online services."

Among the more than two dozen organizations (joining half a hundred academics) signing on to the principles were TechFreedom, the Center for Democracy and Technology and New America's Open Technology Institute. 

Citing the reported White House meeting Thursday (July 11) at which conservatives are expected to air their issues with alleged Silicon Valley bias against them, the Computer & Communications Information Association called that a move to intimidate social media into favoring conservative speech.

CCIA says the meeting it troubling because "it’s always a concern when any government officials who have broad power to issue orders, investigations or regulations haul company officials in for a meeting to discuss 'bias'" and, in this case, it said the meeting "seems designed to intimidate companies to bias content in favor of whoever is calling the meeting."

CCIA President Ed Black came to the defense of Sec. 230, the Communications Decency Act, which allows social media sites to remove extremist speech without facing legal liability.

“Internet services depend on the legal certainty of the Telecom Act’s ‘Good Samaritan’ protections provided to companies to remove hate, extremism, and other objectionable content from the Internet," said Black. "As they do that, no private company should be browbeaten by the government into giving a pass to objectionable content that violates company policies."

Mark Zuckerberg, for example, has said that Facebook tries to weed out content that makes its community uncomfortable.

But conservatives, including the President, say social media sites are using that exemption to censor conservative speech.

Black suggested that if conservatives don't like the calls some social media sites are making, they can go elsewhere.

“Social media sites may wish to allow many types of speech, but should not be required to stay neutral on hate or religious intolerance," he said in a statement. "If those airing grievances at this week’s meeting are unsatisfied with one company’s policy against objectionable content, there are plenty of competitors from which to choose.”

Perhaps, but Facebook and Twitter, two targets of conservatives' ire, arguably have no competitive equals.

CCIA members include Facebook, Google and Amazon.