Facebook Censors Articles from Conservative Outlets About Manafort, Cohen
Facebook Censors
Articles from Conservative Outlets About Manafort, Cohen
BY TYLER O'NEIL AUGUST 23, 2018
Multiple posts
sharing articles by prominent conservatives have been temporarily censored on
Facebook under the excuse that they "look like spam." Both articles
dealt with the Paul Manafort conviction and the Michael Cohen guilty plea,
arguing that these events were not nearly as damning to President Donald Trump
as the media supposed.
First, Facebook blocked Salena Zito, CNN
contributor and author of the groundbreaking book "The
Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics."
On Wednesday afternoon, Zito published a New York Post article explaining "why Trump’s supporters won’t care about Cohen and
Manafort’s convictions."
On Thursday morning, she noticed
something out of place. "So this is interesting… [Facebook] took down my
post of my reporting for the [New York Post]
— I’ve received nine separate messages from readers telling me the same thing
has happened to them. ‘sup [Facebook]?" Zito asked in a tweet.
o this is interesting…@facebook
took down my post of my reporting for the @nypost
— I’ve received nine separate messages from readers telling me the same thing
has happened to them. ‘sup @facebook
?nyp.st/2BDHd9K
Why Trump’s
supporters won’t care about Cohen and Manafort’s convictions
Salena Zito shared a picture of the post removed from the social
media platform, with a message: "We removed this post because it looks
like spam and doesn’t follow our Community Standards."
Per @facebook
to one of several people who posted my @nypost
story (including me) only to have it removed. I just attempted to re-post it,
we shall see.
"They did put the
article back up," Salena Zito told PJ Media. "They never responded to
any of my inquiries." The author laid out the ways she contacted Facebook:
"I first put out a polite tweet, then I direct messaged them, then I sent
them a message through the Facebook page, and then I sent a message through
support. No answer."
"After trying to contact them
through several different ways, the story miraculously reappeared," Zito
told the Washington Times's Larry O'Connor.
Facebook also targeted Jenna Lynn Ellis,
a contributor to The Washington Examiner,
director of public policy at the James Dobson Family Institute and author of "The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution: A Guide for
Christians to Understand America's Constitutional Crisis."
Silicon
Valley Strikes Back: Facebook Censors PragerU After Google Lawsuit
Ellis published an article in The Washington Examiner explaining why "Democrats are overreacting to the Michael Cohen guilty
plea." She argued that plea bargains are a legal fiction, are
not confessions, and are not evidence of crimes or verdicts of guilt.
Therefore, the Cohen plea did not implicate Trump in financial crimes.
Ellis shared the article on Facebook,
and a friend took a picture of Facebook removing the post. Again came the same
message: "We removed this post because it looks like spam and doesn’t
follow our Community Standards."
"I reposted the screenshot and
tagged Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg and the tags were immediately
removed," Ellis told PJ Media. She argued that Facebook is trying to eat
its cake and have it, too.
"Facebook has every right to
suppress content as a private platform, but they have to do so openly in their
terms and conditions, which should give every user clear notice of the
agreement for use," she told PJ Media. "If they want to be a
liberally biased platform, do so openly so conservatives can determine if they
want to use that platform."
Instead, the Facebook team "are
misrepresenting their user agreement and trying to benefit from conservatives
adding to their user numbers to drive up value, but still censor selectively
and against users’ reasonable expectations in signing up for the
platform."
Steve Beynon, senior digital engagement
editor at The Washington Examiner, gave an
update on Ellis's story. "We had another reader send a message to the
Examiner's page with a similar problem," he reported. "We have not
received any violation notices from Facebook and our original post is still up.
However, the image is gone."
Beynon suggested that the problem may
trace back to a bad "bot." "Unfortunately, most social media
sites have bots that sometimes wrongfully IDs spam/bad content."
Ellis also showed PJ Media evidence of
further "looks like spam" censoring. One photo showed a mobile
notification with the same message, "We removed your post because it looks
like spam."
One of Ellis's Facebook friends reported
receiving "the same removal notice — about a barbershop chorus video I
posted last night.!?"
The American Thinker's Thomas Lifson reported that other
conservative articles had been blocked as spam, as well.
Facebook did not respond to PJ Media's
request for comment by press time.
'The
Greatest Threat to Free Speech Comes From LGBTQ Activists Who Rule Facebook,
Google, Amazon'
This round of "spam"
censorship, whether targeted at conservatives or not, seems to come at a
particularly bad time for Facebook. Last week, the social media platform
shadow-banned the conservative educational video nonprofit PragerU. At least
nine of PragerU's Facebook posts reached zero of their 3 million followers, and
Facebook actually deleted some of their videos.
That move seemed ironic since PragerU
had filed
a lawsuit against Google/YouTube last October, alleging
"intentional" censorship of conservative speakers. YouTube continues
to restrict access to PragerU videos, without censoring similar
videos from other, less mainstream or less conservative, accounts.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC),
a left-wing smear factory that brands conservative and Christian organizations
"hate groups" for disagreeing with their liberal worldview, has
encouraged the censorship of conservatives online. Organizations on their
"hate group" list have found themselves exiled.
Just this week, GoFundMe effectively
stole more than $2,500 from Jihad Watch founder Robert Spencer,
whom the SPLC labeled an "extremist" and a "hate group"
leader. This came shortly after Patreon
de-platformed Spencer and Jihad Watch.
Amazon.com's charity program Amazon
Smile dropped
D. James Kennedy Ministries and the Alliance Defending Freedom
(ADF), citing the SPLC "hate group" list. D. James Kennedy Ministries
has sued
Amazon and the SPLC for this action. Last September, the
credit card processing website Vanco
Payments refused to work with the Ruth Institute, a small Roman
Catholic pro-family nonprofit, due to its presence on the "hate
group" list.
Social media companies relying on the
SPLC's "hate group" list may find themselves in a pickle, however.
Approximately 60 different organizations are considering separate
defamation lawsuits against the SPLC over the "hate
group" list.
Even conservatives not among the groups
targeted by the SPLC have found themselves targeted by Facebook, however. Christian
scholar Robert Gagnon has been repeatedly suspended on
Facebook, and in April the social media platform suspended
a German history professor for saying that "Islam is not a
part of German history."
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