Facebook banning (mostly) conservative voices

While I wouldn't call it terribly surprising since it is quite evident that Facebook has liberal-leaning management, many popular conservative voices were permanently banned from their platform today.

source

You might recognize a lot of these folks but just in case you don't they are (from the right - lol) Milo Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones, Louis Farrakhan, and Laura Loomer. Also banned but not pictured are Paul Nehlen, Paul Joseph Watson, and Infowars. It is important to note the obvious that Farrakhan is NOT a conservative for the most part.

So why did this happen? FB will claim it is because these individuals are promoting "hate speech" and are dangerous to society. It doesn't take a real genius to figure out that the real reason for their banning is because they are popular and they talk about things that the top brass at Facebook disagree with. Louis Farrakhan was thrown in there just so FB can claim they weren't targeting only conservatives who happen to be white.

source

Now I realize that FB is not a government entity and they to a certain degree can ban anyone they want to. I also realize that over here at Steemit, we generally don't care much for FB and that is why we are here. Personally, i wish there was a way to reach out to these guys and offer them a streamlined process into Steemit. As far as I know we have only ever banned one group and this had something to do with that group that was selling government secrets to the highest bidder (sorry, but the media / CIA did a good job of burying that story and I don't remember the details.)

It would be a novel opportunity to get a bunch of attention to this platform, provided they would even listen / care.

That's another story though. I think that this is a bad more for FB as they continue to become less and less of a free exchange of ideas and more and more of an exchange of ideas that they approve of. While I know that this isn't necessarily a popular standpoint, I want the world to behave like adults. I don't need to be protected from "hate speech" and I don't think that most people with a fully-functioning brain need to be either.

I don't believe any of the people except for maybe Alex Jones (who is a bit unhinged but entertaining nonetheless) and Farrakhan were really promoting hate anyway and even if they were I think that should be allowed. Everyone has the choice to not listen to it and unless you have pre-existing mental problems a facebook post probably isn't going to inspire you to kill / hurt another person.

This is a partisan move and it will be interesting to see what the blowback is. It will probably just be silly lawsuits that a tyrannosaurus like FB is more than willing / capable of taking on.

UPDATE: Facebook has extended the ban to include anyone who promotes or talks about these people as well. Wow! That is some Orwellian shit there.