The findings: According to the audit, concerns expressed by conservative interviewees generally fell into 6 categories:

Content Distribution and Algorithms: Interviewees generally worried that Facebook’s algorithms began to de-prioritize conservative viewpoints after the January 2018 News Feed Algorithm shift and after policy updates to reduce clickbait and spam. Kyl notes that despite conservative concerns with the Facebook Fact-checking process, Facebook accepted fact-checkers affiliated with conservative publishers.

Content Policies: Conservative interviewees identified concerns in community standards around what was considered hate speech and hate organizations. They thought other content policies disproportionally impacted pro-life and religious groups. Kyl notes Facebook has since made updates to its content policies more clear by providing insight into its content policy process and adding additional explanations of News Feed rankings.

Content Enforcement: Interviewees were concerned that the guidelines and the employees enforcing them were biased against conservatives. In response, Kyle notes that Facebook launch a content appeals process for people to challenge content rulings.

Ad Policies: Many nonprofit groups were worried about the impact on their IRS tax exempt status of having Facebook label their educational or advocacy ads in its archive as “political.” In response, Facebook changed the ad archive name to make it clear not all archived ads are political in nature. Kyl also notes the Facebook medical tubes ad policy update as a change that seeks to address these groups’ concerns.