Facebook commissioned a study on alleged anti-conservative bias. Here's what he found

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The eight-page report, led by former Republican Senator Jon Kyl and other law firm Covington and Burling, LLP, highlights concerns over Facebook's policies and the way in which Facebook's has already taken into account. The audit took place at the request of Facebook last year, following repeated statements of anti-conservative bias, including by President Donald Trump.

The report concludes that Facebook's efforts to fight misinformation have silenced some conservative voices on the platform. For example, some curators consider that some of the websites that Facebook supports to check the facts or report wrong information are from left to right. And Facebook's advertising policy may have inadvertently restricted some anti-abortion advocacy.

The report includes a new policy that Facebook will allow ads with images of people with medical tubes, provided the people presented do not suffer pain or visible distress and that there is no blood or bruising. This change will likely benefit those who post advertisements for pro-life organizations and children's rights groups.

Kyl's report states that Facebook's previous policy on what they called "sensational" commercials meant that pro-life ads that "focused on survival stories of infants born before term" were dismissed from the platform. The policy "has been applied unevenly in the past," said Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs and communications for Facebook, in an article published on the blog about the audit.

Although Kyl acknowledges that Facebook has taken several steps over the past year to counter the anti-conservative bias, the report says the job is far from over.

"Facebook has recognized the importance of our assessment and has taken steps to solve the problems we have discovered, but much more needs to be done to address the concerns expressed by the Conservatives," the report said.

Clegg said Tuesday that Facebook would continue to review and adjust its practices.

President Trump and other Conservatives have invoked allegations of political bias against Silicon Valley companies such as Facebook and Google. Last month, Trump hosted a "Social Media Summit" to address these concerns. However, the White House did not invite representatives of the companies themselves.

For the audit, Kyl and his team met 133 lawmakers and conservative groups from May 2018. Their names are not included in the report. The team presented preliminary results to Facebook in August 2018 and conducted follow-up interviews in May 2019.

Kyl and his team summarized respondents' concerns into six categories: content distribution and algorithms; content policies; application of the content; Ad rules advertising application; diversity of staffing points of view.

Respondents said they believe Facebook's algorithms remove articles from conservative news sources, for example. Other technological platforms, such as Google (GOOG) and Twitter (tWTR), have faced similar allegations.

"From the Ivy League to Hollywood and the mainstream media, Americans with traditional morals or conservative politics have often felt excluded from the country's elite and creative cultural institutions," wrote Kyl in a column published in the Wall Street Journal.

The report and the editorial describe changes made to the policy by Facebook in response to the audit over the past year. For example, Facebook announced last month the creation of a supervisory board of calls regarding the deletion of content.

Clegg said the audit was "in progress" and that Kyl and his team would release another report in a few months.

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