The Patriot Post® · Starbucks Demands More Facebook Censorship

By Thomas Gallatin ·
https://patriotpost.us/articles/79809-starbucks-demands-more-facebook-censorship-2021-05-12

Apparently, Starbucks has just about had it with Facebook, as the world’s largest coffee company is reportedly threatening to remove its presence from the social media platform. Starbucks’s beef with Facebook, however, is not about lack of free speech; it’s about the tech giant’s lack of censorship. That’s right: Starbucks is upset that Facebook has allowed “insensitive” and “negative” comments regarding its “woke” messaging to remain posted.

According to a Facebook employee, “Starbucks is in the process of evaluating their organic presence on FB, and whether they should continue to have a presence on the platform at all. Anytime they post (organically) in regards to social issues or their mission & values work (e.g. BLM, LGBTQ, sustainability/climate change, etc.) they are overwhelmed by negative/insensitive, hate speech [and] related comments on their posts.”

Gee, mean comments are pretty rare on the Internet. What’s that about?

Sarcasm aside, Starbucks’s social media team reportedly has struggled to moderate comments on Facebook, complaining that it has been nearly impossible to keep hateful messages from being posted. In other words, preventing Internet trolls from leaving negative comments has proven unsuccessful.

Starbucks spokeswoman Sanja Gould didn’t confirm whether the company was planning on leaving Facebook, but she did raise criticism: “While some changes have been implemented, we believe more can be done to create welcoming and inclusive online communities. We work collectively with all companies we do business with to ensure any advertising done on our behalf is in alignment with our brand standards.”

Translation: Facebook needs to get more “woke” and therefore exclude any viewpoints that don’t comport with and promote Starbucks’s leftist concerns. That’s called “being inclusive.”

But Starbucks isn’t the only “woke” company or organization seeking to pressure Facebook into engaging in more censorship. As BuzzFeed reports, “Starbucks’s reevaluation of its Facebook presence comes amid a wider reckoning of the hate and misinformation that continues to proliferate on the platform. Last week in the United Kingdom, the Premier League and its 20 associated soccer teams boycotted Facebook and its photo-sharing app, Instagram, for four days in an attempt to bring awareness to the constant racist abuse that players face on those platforms. Last year, Starbucks was one of hundreds of companies to stop advertising on Facebook as part of the ‘Stop Hate for Profit’ campaign, which sought to pressure the world’s largest social network into taking a harder stance on racist and hateful content.”

It’s not that racism doesn’t exist, but frankly we view these allegations with the rampant fad of hate crime hoaxes in mind. Sometimes these clowns are trolling themselves just to prove their victimhood.

Besides, when viewing examples of what Starbucks considered comments deserving of censorship by Facebook, it becomes patently clear that the coffee company simply wants suppression of any expression of disagreement with its promotion of woke ideology. Even BuzzFeed deadpans, “When [Starbucks] spoke of its support of Black Lives Matter last June, commenters demanded respect for police officers. When Starbucks posted in support of Asian Americans on March 17, the day after six Asian Americans were shot and killed in spas in the Atlanta area, commenters insisted the attack was not motivated by race.”

The horror!

The real issue here is that Starbucks objects to free speech, and Facebook has not gone far enough (in this one instance) down the woke speech-suppression hole to satisfy the coffee giant.