Facebook’s Been Targeting Conservative Individuals for Years
Here’s what the media isn’t telling you.
Facebook is in damage control following allegations that its curators purposely suppressed conservative opinion in the trending topics section. But another equally if not even more troubling issue the mainstream media is “overlooking” is that this isn’t Facebook’s first time censoring “unsavory” opinions.
For years now, individual conservatives have had their pages shut down for espousing the Right ideals. The Media Research Center chronicles numerous examples here, including anyone from the conservative group “Chicks on The Right” to the Center for Medical Progress to even “a Canadian page critical of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.”
One of the victims happens to be Fox News commentator Todd Starnes, who writes in a recent column about his being blacklisted from Facebook in 2013:
> I am the bad boy of Facebook.
> I earned that badge of honor back in 2013 when Facebook blocked my page and removed a message I had posted that invoked Paula Deen, the National Rifle Association and Jesus Christ. Here’s what I wrote:
> “I’m about as politically incorrect as you can get. I’m wearing an NRA ball cap, eating a Chick-fil-A sandwich, reading a Paula Deen cookbook and sipping a 20-ounce sweet tea while sitting in my Cracker Barrel rocking chair with the Gaither Vocal Band singing ‘Jesus Saves’ on the stereo and a Gideon’s Bible in my pocket. Yes sir, I’m politically incorrect and happy as a June bug.”
Oh, the horror. Speaking of horror, here are just a few of the pages Starnes found on Facebook just this week:
“F— Donald Trump”
“F— Sarah Palin Hoe A— B—”
“Tea Party Can Kiss My A—”
“Rush Limbaugh is an Abject A—”
Starnes opines, “Had I been reading Saul Alinsky’s ‘Rules For Radicals,’ wearing a Planned Parenthood ball cap and smoking a joint, Facebook would’ve left me alone.” He says his page is still “subjected to random censorship by the Facebook gods."
Facebook claims this is all just a misunderstanding and that it would never stoop to such a low. Indeed, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg met with 16 Republican pundits and politicians Wednesday to smooth things over. Yet the evidence suggests employees have been censoring conservatives for years. If media outlets were truly concerned about the implications, they’d include the years-long attack on conservative individuals in their coverage.
(Updated.)
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