Massive Hypocrisy As Facebook Deletes Hundreds of Dissenting Voices with Millions of Followers. Obvious Move To Manipulate Politics in the Name of Stopping The Manipulation of Politics!
The ongoing move to silence dissenting voices online continues apace. I noticed a few days ago that my comments on Facebook were literally being deleted in realtime without explanation - but this is something I have seen before. Yesterday's leaked Google Document set the scene for the logic being used to neuter the internet... Now today hundreds of pages on Facebook have been deleted.
According to @pressfortruth and @lukewearechange, Fackebooc has today deleted the following pages from it's system - the numbers refer to the number of followers each page had:
The Free Thought Project - 3.1 m
The Anti Media - 2.1m
Police the Police - 1.9m
Cop Block - 1.7m
Filming Cops - 1.4m
Choice & Truth - 2.9m
Punk Rock Libertarians - 125k
End The Drug War - 460k
Mass Report - 500k
Press For Truth - 350k
Psychologic - Anarchist
Skeptic Society
No Victim, No Crime
Modern Slavery Hilarious Vines
I Only Owe You Non Aggression - 13k
Bay Area Police The Police - 7k
V is For Voluntary - 160k
Conspiracy Facts - 120k
The Free Thought Project.com (back up page) - 23k
You Won't See This On TV
Fucked Up Shit You Should Know About
Unlimited Liberty
Citizens For A Bleaker America
Rachel Blevins - 69k
Police the Police NY
Gun Laws Don't Work
The Liberty Principle: No Consent From The Governed
Policing The Police
Legalize Cannabis
Get Involved, You Live Here: 360k
Fuck The Government - 154k
New School Raphael 1
Voluntaryist Veterans
Anonymous News
Hemp
Matt Agorist - 5.4k
TheAnonNews
DIY Revival
We The Individuals
Anti GMO Foods and Fluoridated Water
North Texas Cop Block
Black Markets Are Beautiful - 3k
Political Junkie News Media
Free Your Mind
Who are they?
I don't know all of these groups/pages, but I do know some of them and I know some are on Steem too. In general, while some of the ones I recognise have put out some questionable messages in the past, I would not say they generally (from what I have seen) have ever crossed a line that would make them be classed as malicious or abusive.
@antimedia - They are an anarchist, pro-compassion group who regularly output pretty high quality pieces - absolutely NOT 'clickbait' - but absolutely a voice that is counter to the controlled, mainstream narratives on some subjects.
Cop Block - I thought this page was shut down already, but maybe someone else took it over. I was aware of them from their early days - they essentially have people out filming police in America, ensuring they stick to the law and producing records of abuse. In some cases, their followers have been abusive to people - I am sure - but nowhere near as abusive as the police they have been dealing with. I am talking about some of the most evil actions you are likely to see on the streets, being carried out by policy enforcers, totally illegally and often routinely.
@tftproject - The free thought project - another similar group to the others with many decent journalistic pieces online that provide counter narratives to the (usually lies) perpetrated by the lamestream/mainstream media networks.
@anonnews - Anon News. AFAIK this is the same group as the one listed on Steem. Essentially a part of the 'anonymous' pro internet and human freedom movement.
You can see from the names that in general these are pro freedom, pro truth type groups who are active in the move to expose corruption in society. Partly, including the whistleblower types that the recent leaked document from google on censorship referred to as being basically 'the good guys'.
What have Facebook said?
Facebook stated that these accounts violated their terms of service with 'spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior'.
The full text from their post on the subject is below:
People need to be able to trust the connections they make on Facebook. It’s why we have a policy banning coordinated inauthentic behavior — networks of accounts or Pages working to mislead others about who they are, and what they are doing. This year, we’ve enforced this policy against many Pages, Groups and accounts created to stir up political debate, including in the US, the Middle East, Russia and the UK. But the bulk of the inauthentic activity we see on Facebook is spam that’s typically motivated by money, not politics. And the people behind it are adapting their behavior as our enforcement improves.
One common type of spam has been posts that hawk fraudulent products like fake sunglasses or weight loss “remedies.” But a lot of the spam we see today is different. The people behind it create networks of Pages using fake accounts or multiple accounts with the same names. They post clickbait posts on these Pages to drive people to websites that are entirely separate from Facebook and seem legitimate, but are actually ad farms. The people behind the activity also post the same clickbait posts in dozens of Facebook Groups, often hundreds of times in a short period, to drum up traffic for their websites. And they often use their fake accounts to generate fake likes and shares. This artificially inflates engagement for their inauthentic Pages and the posts they share, misleading people about their popularity and improving their ranking in News Feed. This activity goes against what people expect on Facebook, and it violates our policies against spam.
Topics like natural disasters or celebrity gossip have been popular ways to generate clickbait. But today, these networks increasingly use sensational political content – regardless of its political slant – to build an audience and drive traffic to their websites, earning money for every visitor to the site. And like the politically motivated activity we’ve seen, the “news” stories or opinions these accounts and Pages share are often indistinguishable from legitimate political debate. This is why it’s so important we look at these actors’ behavior – such as whether they’re using fake accounts or repeatedly posting spam – rather than their content when deciding which of these accounts, Pages or Groups to remove.
Today, we’re removing 559 Pages and 251 accounts that have consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior. Given the activity we’ve seen — and its timing ahead of the US midterm elections — we wanted to give some details about the types of behavior that led to this action. Many were using fake accounts or multiple accounts with the same names and posted massive amounts of content across a network of Groups and Pages to drive traffic to their websites. Many used the same techniques to make their content appear more popular on Facebook than it really was. Others were ad farms using Facebook to mislead people into thinking that they were forums for legitimate political debate.
Of course, there are legitimate reasons that accounts and Pages coordinate with each other — it’s the bedrock of fundraising campaigns and grassroots organizations. But the difference is that these groups are upfront about who they are, and what they’re up to. As we get better at uncovering this kind of abuse, the people behind it — whether economically or politically motivated — will change their tactics to evade detection. It’s why we continue to invest heavily, including in better technology, to prevent this kind of misuse. Because people will only share on Facebook if they feel safe and trust the connections they make here.
My Comment
It is abundantly clear that the tactics being used here are the same pathetic and deceptive tactics that the empire builders of this planet have used for a long time to project that their detractors are somehow 'bad' people or 'anti social'. In reality, what can be more anti-social than stifling free speech and mis-representing the truth about those you are shutting down?
I imagine there will be numerous court cases surrounding this and there is some precedent to these companies losing in such situation - such as Google recently receiving the world's largest fine for illegally removing competitors from their search results.
How long will it take for the wider world to real-eyes the lies that they are being fed on a daily basis and to learn that the 'crazy conspiracy theorists' that the media loves to talk about are often actually serious researchers with entirely valid evidence and logic behind their observations and claims. Is there a chance that large media companies will openly lie to everyone about who they are shutting down in order to achieve political and economic advantage? Or can they all be classed as totally trustworthy? Google's 2.1 billion Euro fine holds part of that answer!
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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Yikes. The amping up of censorship in the past few months is truly ridiculous. Glad I don't use Facebook anymore.
I see this as a golden opportunity to increase users on Steem - There are millions of followers of these pages and some of the deleted pages have accounts on Steem already. I am formulating a plan!
Yep, that's an amazing idea. Youtube, Twitter, Facebook.... these places are currently digging their own graves. Looking forward to hearing your plan :-D
I just laid down an outline of a plan for this here. :)
Steem is gathering up a quality group of independent journalists for sure!
They kicked me off months ago... 1 day after I downloaded the "dossier" they had on my account. I didn't recognize over half of the stuff in my dossier and they banned me for life for saying "we got to kill all the niggers." Something I would never even think of saying!!!
How did you find your 'dossier'? I have never heard of that before. They have locked me out of my account before, a long time ago and I opened another one.. I only use them now for work reasons. :/
I forget. Somebody posted it on here about a year or so ago. If I could get back into my account I could figure it out.
Facebook uses an unfair policy for followers I hate Facebook and I do not like to deal with it😑
I think that Facebook and Twitter are just coerced by the US government. They are owned and people must be more vigilant @ura-soul
As far as I know, Twitter is owned by the alleged Saudi 'Royal' family.. But yes, ultimately, these systems may as well be owned by entities that own governments globally too.
What I find scary is how this is being played down. I have spoken to find and colleagues who do not seem bothered about this. This is the end of freedom of speech and a very worrying time for the globe and the fact that people are not concerned about this shows what state many of us are in .
As you point out this is the time for the rise of Steemit 💯🐒
Until people step outside of their mind control and actually take action to improve the world and increase freedom, their denial will continue to blind them from what is all around.. Namely, more denial and denial of free will.
Thats true and many have been conditioned this way meaning its hard for the to step out of their mind control. Its coming though and many of my conversations are have are moving in a more postive direction. Acts like this will only enforce this way of thinking a blessing in disguise in some ways 💯🐒
Facebook is a private company and I support their right to control their content how they please. However, their behavior sucks and people really just need to start using alternatives. Vote with your feet so to speak. Steemit of course is one alternative but their are tons of others as well.
From @caitlinjohnstone at https://steemit.com/censorship/@caitlinjohnstone/internet-censorship-just-took-an-unprecedented-leap-forward-and-hardly-anyone-noticed
"Any time you try to talk about how internet censorship threatens our ability to get the jackboot of oligarchy off our necks you'll always get some guy in your face who's read one Ayn Rand book and thinks he knows everything, saying things like "Facebook is a private company! It can do whatever it wants!" Is it now? Has not Facebook been inviting US government-funded groups to help regulate its operations, vowing on the Senate floor to do more to facilitate the interests of the US government, deleting accounts at the direction of the US and Israeli governments, and handing the guidance of its censorship behavior over to the Atlantic Council, which receives funding from the US government, the EU, NATO and Gulf states? How "private" is that? Facebook is a deeply government-entrenched corporation, and Facebook censorship is just what government censorship looks like in a corporatist system of government."
First, I've never read an Ayn Rand book. Second, if there is government money in Facebook then the solution is for the government to cease funding it, not for the government to regulate it. There is absolutely no reason for the government to be regulating a social media platform. The government should be in no way funding or regulating social media or it ultimately becomes nothing more than a propaganda tool.
Facebook and other social media platforms and indeed any internet site that allows user input all have guidelines for appropriate content (most do anyway). These guidelines may include restrictions on adult content, language, what kind of links are posted, etc. This is NOT a first amendment issue. No corporation is required to provide YOU a platform on which to speak. To say that free speech must be enforced on these platforms really means that they can have no content guidelines besides perhaps removing content that breaks the law (threats, etc.).
The government provides all kinds of funding to all kinds of businesses and individuals. Small business loans, bailouts, tax breaks, government programs for first time homebuyers, etc. Just because the government redistributes wealth doesn't mean everything it redistributes to becomes a public platform or utility. Otherwise first time home buyers could be forced to provide public housing.
I'm not saying I agree with how the big social media platforms are choosing to regulate content. I do not. However, the solution is to move on to another platform and let those fail, not entrench them into monopolies with government control. If you don't like a product, choose another.
The last gasps of a dying empire.
Events are in motion, and things are happening fast.
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