Survey: Google Employees Don't Feel Opinion Diversity Love

Blind, an online community drawing anonymous edge employee input, says that when it asked the question: "Is your company accepting of diversity of political opinions?," only 12% of those Google employees identifying as conservatives (43 responses) said yes, and only 39% of all respondents said that was the case.

Of the 38 Facebook employees who self-identified as conservatives, 26% said the company was accepting of diverse political opinions, but a minority of the whole sample (41%) said yes.

Related: Trump Says Social Media Censor Conservative Speech

Conservatives in Washington have accused edge providers of censoring or discouraging their views, including labeling them hate speech, and of Silicon Valley of having a liberal bias, which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg conceded was a legitimate concern, though telling Congress in hearings earlier this year that there was no systematic bias at Facebook.

While Amazon, which is co-owned with The Washington Post, has been hammered by President Trump, it actually scored high in tolerance of political diversity in the survey, with 59% saying yes, topped only by Apple at 60.4%.

Related: Reps Press Google on Data Collection Issues

But conservatives at both companies were not feeling the love, with 26% of the Apple sample saying yes, and 27% of the Amazon respondents.

The samples for each were small. Total respondents from Apple were 86; amazon's total was 342; Facebook was 181 and Google 215.

But the answers dovetail generally with the findings of the Pew Research Center. A June Pew poll found that a majority of Americans think it is likely that social media platforms are politically biased. The study found that 72% of adults feel that social media platforms censor political speech that those sites find objectionable, with 35% saying it is very likely and 37% somewhat likely.

Among Republicans in the Pew survey, 64% say social media platforms favor liberal viewpoints over conservative, while only 6% say it is the other way around. Among Democrats, 28% say Silicon Valley favors liberals, while 16% say it favors conservatives and a majority of 53% say they favor neither.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.