The Patriot Post® · Facebook Decisions Based on Political Bias

Earlier this month, we found out Facebook had a “whistleblower” whose intention, we were told, was cutting the behemoth down to size. We had a few questions about that assessment, though, given the background and political leanings of one Frances Haugen. And we were right. Her objective is more censorship, not less, just with humans (in government) doing it “better” than algorithms.

You may recall her solution to address Facebook’s perceived misdeeds would be government intervention. “We need to have different regulations on engagement-based ranking” she said. “Engagement-based ranking is always going to prioritize the sensational. It’s always going to prioritize misinformation.” It wasn’t just Haugen who wanted the feds to step in. Practically foaming at the mouth, author and MSNBC contributor Ben Rhodes declared: “Facebook is an existential danger to democracy and a global public safety hazard. Like previous products that endanger people, it necessitates aggressive government action with strong enforcement.”

But unlike Twitter, which is dominated by left-wingers, Facebook has maintained a more evenly divided readership, most of whom aren’t interested in politics but crave information on a myriad of different subjects. (For example, this writer follows several interest pages local to him along with a lot of baseball-related sites.) However, Facebook’s workforce would be at home on Twitter as it leans way over to the Bernie Bro end of the spectrum — hence, a call to “get Breitbart out of News Tab” detailed this week in follow-up reporting by The Wall Street Journal. Remember, the Journal helped bring Haugen to the spotlight by using her whistleblower documents to compile “The Facebook Files” over the last few months. As the Journal notes, “Many Republicans, from Mr. Trump down, say Facebook discriminates against conservatives.”

Because Facebook does discriminate against conservatives.

However, the Journal pulls punches by adding: “The documents reviewed by the Journal didn’t render a verdict on whether bias influences its decisions overall. They do show that employees and their bosses have hotly debated whether and how to restrain right-wing publishers, with more-senior employees often providing a check on agitation from the rank and file. The documents viewed by the Journal, which don’t capture all of the employee messaging, didn’t mention equivalent debates over left-wing publications.”

Trust us, there were no debates there.

The Journal goes on to reveal, “Other documents also reveal that Facebook’s management team has been so intently focused on avoiding charges of bias that it regularly places political considerations at the center of its decision making.”

Much of the report is on the debate over Breitbart and its resulting loss in traffic from Facebook suppression. This may be a good time to remind you of what our Mark Alexander recently noted: “Starting in June of 2020, Patriot Post incoming traffic from [social media] precipitously dropped by more than 80% — the direct result of shadow-banning and suppression of our reach on those platforms.” The funny thing is, that was just about the time Facebook started compiling what it called “strikes” for “content deemed false by third-party fact checkers.”

Yet if real misinformation was the problem, no Leftmedia outlet would be allowed to post anything because they would have struck out like a whole lineup of Caseys at the bat. And we didn’t even get into Facebook’s withholding of information, such as the shadow-banning of legitimate news outlets such as the New York Post for the Hunter Biden laptop story or the outright ban on Donald Trump for questioning the 2020 election and the events of January 6.

One prospective area of relief that a leftist whistleblower can’t use as a springboard for government intervention is the legal system, which makes a recent law passed by the state of Texas another entrée into where Facebook is coming from. Since Big Tech sued the state of Texas regarding the law, a federal judge is allowing companies “limited discovery” about their content moderation practices.

Whether Facebook adopts a new name or not, the increased scrutiny on a social media behemoth means some things will change about Facebook. Perhaps it will finally go the way of onetime online staples like AOL and Myspace, but some of the folks getting their news from Facebook may need a backup plan — like subscribing to The Patriot Post.