In Brief: Facebook and Left-Wing Hate
Conspicuously missing in Facebook whistleblower dumps is any hint of such discussions.
The Facebook “whistleblower” made waves last month by slamming the social media giant for its censorship practices … because Facebook wasn’t doing enough to silence conservatives. More leaked documents are more or less along the same lines. The editorial board of the New York Post, censored by social media over its Hunter Biden blockbuster, noticed this too, as well as adding a disturbing fact: “The thousands of pages released so far contain zero signs of staff worries about (or even awareness of) left-wing hate speech and misinformation.”
Perhaps we’re only seeing part of the picture. But Facebook staffers’ incessant drive to censor right-wing stories and sites suggests they really are blind to the often-outrageous speech from outlets on the other side of the spectrum.
The Wall Street Journal’s blockbuster report [last] week detailed how the social-media giant’s “employees have consistently pushed to suppress or de-platform right-wing outlets.” The company itself also gave out “strikes” when third-party fact-checkers ruled a platform had published “false” content, with repeat offenders sometimes suspended from the site: “Escalations came more frequently against conservative outlets.”
The Journal focused on the 20% reduction of traffic for Breitbart, but we’ve seen an 80% drop in traffic coming from Facebook since June 2020.
Management did push back — but not because it worried its woke workforce was too comfortable with censorship. Higher-ups feared that targeting Trump-friendly outlets would earn it more ire — and perhaps regulation — from the administration then in charge.
Ironically, the biggest conundrum for Zuckerberg & Co. was that they didn’t want to bight the hand that feeds.
Indeed, CEO Mark Zuckerberg can thank conservative outlets in part for ever-growing ad-revenue cash, as they see some of the site’s highest levels of engagement, with Breitbart beating The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN.
That, of course, brought the Post to an obvious conclusion:
Note that those “mainstream” media traffic in misinformation themselves. Last year, the Times claimed the Trump administration was ignoring Russia paying bounties to the Taliban for attacking US troops. That turned out to be false — but wasn’t reported as such until after Joe Biden used it in his campaign.
Heck, the entire Russia-collusion narrative has proven utterly false, the concoction of the Clinton campaign and Trump-hating government insiders. But CNN, the Times and the (other) Post ruthlessly fanned the hysteria, regularly recounting unverified rumors.
Facebook’s woke staffers are intent on targeting conservative sites while its management’s only concern is keeping the cash coming. Whatever the whistleblowers will release next, you can safely bet it won’t show Facebook has even a whiff of bias against the left.
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