Facebook’s war on the “unsafe” Diamond and Silk
You may remember Diamond and Silk. They started out on YouTube when Trump was just a candidate, and became a sensation for their humor, their attitude, and the fact that they were two black women who supported Trump.
Then they got a gig on Fox, and continued doing what they do. Here’s a very short example:
Being savvy marketers (unlike neo-neocon), they have a Facebook page. But guess what? Facebook has decided they are “unsafe to the community” (I assume that’s the Facebook community, but maybe they mean the community at large).
Yes, unsafe.
Here’s Diamond and Silk’s description of Facebook’s move:
“Finally after several emails, chats, phone calls, appeals, beating around the bush, lies, and giving us the run around, Facebook gave us another bogus reason why Millions of people who have liked and/or followed our page no longer receives notification and why our page, post and video reach was reduced by a very large percentage.
Here is the reply from Facebook. Thu, Apr 5, 2018 at 3:40 PM: “The Policy team has came to the conclusion that your content and your brand has been determined unsafe to the community.”
And here’s a video of Diamond and Silk from Fox, talking about what happened to them:
Facebook is a business, but it seems to be extending the philosophy of the anti-free-speech movement on so many campuses—that we are so fragile we must be protected against speech we don’t like (i.e. speech the left doesn’t like)—to the business world. They are so big I guess they think they won’t suffer from these kinds of moves, or that any possible hit they might take will be small and practically meaningless to them.
“They are so big I guess they think they won’t suffer from these kinds of moves, or that any possible hit they might take will be small and practically meaningless to them.”
That’s what other businesses thought too.
Just before they disappeared.
I don’t FaceTweet etc or I would stop now and tell them why.
I’m working on detangling from the Big G.
What’s the big deal? Mr. Zuckerburg is simply asking them to move to the back of the bus. Nothing wrong with that, right?
The hypocrisy is sickening. We stumbled on to Diamond and Silk on the “Watters World” show. My wife, who watches faithfully, always calls me when they come on. I view them as a comedy routine; and they are a delightful one. The issue is that their (mild) edginess is aimed in a direction that is unacceptable to the Lords of the Left.
Opted out of Facebook some time ago. I just did not like the environment (I confess that I do slip over to my wife’s computer occasionally to see pictures posted by our darling grandchildren). It is kind of shocking the amount of personal information that people throw into the public arena; and, of course, there are those who are happy to take advantage of it.
Aesopfan, I interpret your comment as “disentangling from Google”. I wish I could figure a reasonable way to do it. I am not going to buy an Apple phone to escape Android because my lovely wireless provider does not support Apple; and I am not sure that there is a better (more convenient) web based email than G Mail–or one that does not have the same characteristics as Google mail. Suggestions are welcome.
These two women are very sympathetic and they will probably get their account restrictions removed but what about less appealing people? The fact is that we on the Right have lost the culture war and it’s the Left’s culture, their rules.
The Powerlinebloggers have discussed solutions to open up the public square to conservative ideas. Paul Mirengoff optimistically thinks that parallel Right institutions to the Left behemoths will emerge. John Hinderaker thinks this is not possible.
I tend to agree with Hinderaker. Even though the entertainment media have been far Left for decades no alternative has emerged. Shows like “last man standing” are canceled because of their conservative leanings even though the show’s ratings were high. Rosanne is a weirdo and will only be allowed her venue as long as she makes conservatives look bad. Hollywood only makes the occasional conservative movie even though those are usually highly profitable.
The “news” has shown that they would rather destroy their businesses than become inclusive of conservatives. And the outlets that are semi-conservative like Fox News drift Left with Leftist hosts such as Shepherd Smith and Chris Wallace.
Face it–WASS (we are so screwed).
reminds me of the scene from the Woody Allen (another FAR Leftist) flick “Play it Again Sam” where he is trying to pick up a goth chick at an art gallery. He asks her what she thinks of a painting and she anwers with a torrent of dark. He then asks what are you doing on Saturday? She says committing suicide. He quickly regroups and says “what about Friday”?
“They are so big I guess they think they won’t suffer from these kinds of moves, or that any possible hit they might take will be small and practically meaningless to them.”
That’s what YouTube thought until last week.
The number of cases of obvious censorship is building.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/02/24/prageru-suing-google-over-youtube-videos/
“Prager University (PragerU), a conservative nonprofit that creates educational videos, is suing Google for allegedly discriminating against the digital media organization for its fairly moderate ideological slant.
Specifically, PragerU is accusing YouTube, which is owned by Google parent company Alphabet, of restricting or “demonetizing” videos even though they all appear to be innocuous and compliant with the platform’s rules.
PragerU’s videos include: former and current professors and scholars from Stanford, Harvard, and Yale, like Alan Dershowitz; prominent athletes, like Cobi Jones; popular celebrities like Mike Rowe; and influential figures like Steve Forbes. The majority of the people featured – sans political commentator Dinesh D’Souza – are not usually considered exceptionally controversial. Neither are a lot of the topics, some of which are likely studied in classrooms across the country.”
PragerU lost the first court round; no big surprise.
dailysignal.com/2018/03/29/judge-tosses-prageru-lawsuit-accusing-google-youtube-of-censoring-conservative-content/
Commentary includes many references to the hypocrisy of claiming a baker is a public accomodation and can’t refuse to support LGBT marriage, but Google/YouTube is a private company that can refuse to serve conservative providers and readers.
Yeah, right.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/04/09/diamond-and-silk-respond-to-facebook-calling-them-dangerous-a-violation-of-our-civil-rights/
“How is it that somebody can go on to Facebook, post derogatory pictures of our president with his head being cut off and so forth, they let that stand,” they said. “But then you have you two black chicks who’s down with politics, standing there just propping up our president. The American people. Being behind everything and his agenda and they want to shut us down. That’s not going to work with Diamond and Silk.”
Lawfare. Crowdfunding financed class action lawsuits. These companies are engaged in blatant discrimination that violates 1st amendment protections. Fight fire with fire and use their own weapons against them.
This is an opportunity to tie together two strands of anti-conservative bias: social media censorship and l’affaire Williamson.
Julie Kelly at American Greatness pins the tail on the donkey.
https://amgreatness.com/2018/04/06/anti-trump-appeasers-on-the-right-empower-the-mob/
“There are already plenty of tweets and think pieces decrying the chilling effect of Williamson’s firing and lamenting the disappearance of tolerance on the Left for diverse views or controversial opinions. But that’s not my take because, frankly, it’s not terribly insightful. The Left is on a rampage in the media, academia, and corporate America to shut down anyone who strays from the prescribed narrative.
What happened to Williamson is the natural result of a Left that has been emboldened by the very people with whom Williamson is now politically-aligned with: The anti-Trump Right. For two years, in their craven desire to destroy the president, Trump foes on the Right have either intentionally or unwittingly empowered the tyrannical Left. They’ve given aid and comfort to the enemy by cribbing their language and borrowing their tactics. They sold out their previous “conservative” principles to win new admirers on the Left, particularly in the elite media.
…
[lots of examples and links, none of which will be news here]
…
At every turn, the anti-Trump “Right” has signaled its solidarity with the tyrannical Left. Now that one of its own scalps has been seized by the mob, they want to get out the fainting couches while we sit here, amused by it all.
Guess Who’s Next?
What did these fawning Trump-haters think? A few Trump-bashing columns in the Washington Post and appearances on CNN would make their quasi-conservative views more acceptable to the intolerant Left? That their opinions on abortion or free speech or transgender troops would be welcomed with open arms?
No, dummies, that’s not how the Left operates. And now, not only will you be smeared for defending Williamson’s right to a divergent opinion, you also will be accused of wanting to execute women who’ve had abortions. Because that’s how the Left rolls. It’s not enough simply to support a person’s right to express a controversial viewpoint: You own whatever that viewpoint is as well. It’s the strategy for how the Left expands its hit list, and now you’re all on it.
So, anti-Trumpers on the Right, don’t spend too much time pearl-clutching about Kevin Williamson. It’s only a matter of time before they come for you.”
BTW, if anyone thinks that Big G doesn’t manipulate their algorithms, consider this anecdotal evidence.
When I open a new tab, I get a set of 8 thumbnails that are alleged to represent my favorite sites.
(one FAQ site says “.. that thumbnails are for Most visited sites and Recently closed windows and tabs.”)
Neo is first, then Dyer, Hoyt, Dilbert, Steyn, and recently chicagoboyz. No problem with that. 😉
I don’t put them there: they magically appeared after I had accessed those sites, although there have been others which I deleted to get the current lineup.
If I delete the one at the end, another URL shows up; today it was a post (not even a continuous site) which I had visited twice, yesterday and today, and had never seen before. I deleted it as being irrelevant outside that visit.
The spot is now blank.
I go to PowerLineBlog several times a day, everyday.
It does not and never has shown up on this thumbnail list.
I don’t know why it is uniquely banned from that list, but it certainly is.
* * *
I am going to try this when I have time.
https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-edit-the-8-thumbnails-on-Chromes-homepage
Answered Jun 1, 2016 · Author has 160 answers and 1.9m answer views
While you cannot directly edit them, there is a bit more of answer than the other posters gave. Step by step:
Delete your history
Visit the sites you want to populate in the thumbnails, in the order in which wish to populate them
restart Chrome
your desired thumbnails should now be populated
as you visit sites you don’t wish to populate, hover over the tile and an “X” will appear in the top right corner of said tile, click to delete
after clicking, reload the new tab to repopulate
if you misclick or accidentally delete, scroll just past the thumbnails, and click “restore all” to begin again
the tiles will remain populated based on both your recent history, and frequency of visits, i.e., your most visited site will be in the top left, and descend from there
Espionage has always been a public private enterprise.
Once we progressed beyond punchcards and databases the size of a large factory, that is.
Kind of like the pony express. The horse knows more than the rider. Just racing along the telegraph line.
On the thumbnail-bias thing, I opened and closed lots of tabs since my last comment, and not once did a post from American Greatness, American Thinker, or other well-known conservative sites populate the empty block.
However (despite the fact that I haven’t been there since sometime late last month), it now shows a link to The New Neo.
Nice, but…why??
S&D may be black and female, but now they are Uncle Toms. I would like to see them win a few billion dollars in a law suit.
It seems as if, more and more, the Leftists who run various web platforms are squeezing out conservative thought and commentary.
What exactly does ”unsafe to the community” mean?
Apparently other than this vague nonsense phrase–which could mean anything–Facebook gave no concrete reason for how exactly the content generated by Diamond and Silk might have been “unsafe.”
Taking this phrase at face value, it would seem that anything, any conservative idea or commentary could be considered “unsafe” by this Lefty crew running Facebook and be banned.
Conservatives need to fight to guarantee that they are not shoved out of the public square, and that their ideas and arguments are not marginalized or banned altogether.
Will this be brought up when Zuckerberg testifies to Congress?
Silicon Valley is like the capital of super villains from Marvel.
As a messenger, I gave due warning about the Leftist alliance and the evil of Demoncrats starting from 2007.
Everything else… is really up to humanity or America. You all are free to do what you wish, or not to do. Either way, fate is coming.
As for Facebook, their revenue comes from their users. Don’t like them? Stop using social media and giving them free info to sell. Simple.
Just like with Hollywood: stop paying them to produce propaganda and lies to the world.
People pay Hollywood, then complain about media bias. Total bullsh.
Commentary includes many references to the hypocrisy of claiming a baker is a public accomodation and can’t refuse to support LGBT marriage, but Google/YouTube is a private company that can refuse to serve conservative providers and readers.
Yeah, right.
Just burn it all down at this point, not going to matter too much given the Final War.
Aesopfan,
The thumbnail thing is weird. I use chrome as a secondary browser for a convoluted reason and what they choose to show doesn’t always make sense but doesn’t seem politically motivated as ace of spades seems to be permanently entrenched in the first spot. I am really trying to steer clear of google as much as I can though it’s virtually impossible.
And I truly hate Facebook. It has done as much or more damage to people than almost any tech company.
If the republicans don’t grill Zuckerberg about the Obama campaign help in 2008 and 2012 then they are beyond useless. That needs to be pounded and pounded every time Cambridge whatsitsname comes up.
Nobody gets stomped on faster than someone from an “identity” group who doesn’t buy the narrative.
Nobody gets stomped on faster than someone from an “identity” group who doesn’t buy the narrative.
I’ve grown sufficiently disgusted with FB that i have, for the time being, eschewed it…. One reason I’m back posting on blogs after a time away…
I didn’t dislike blogs, i was just time-limited.
FB is what happens when everyone got what they wished: now your real identity is no longer shielded by the pen names we use.
See, happy now.
Everyone is in a big online city, and is that any surprise that people become insane when they can’t get away from other humans now.
Everyone that ever, even once in existence, talked about the problem of keyboard warriors existing, should be celebrating in the streets.
AesopFan Says:
See, the Amish don’t have this problem of facebook whatever. I knew there was something wrong with social media starting from MySpace.
Seeing ahead so far doesn’t really make much sense to normal mortals.
But I am glad that I am not the only person on Earth that knew the dangers of internet identities being exposed to totalitarian inner city society. Amish got there first, Aesop. Know anyone else that got there first?
Increasingly, if you want to do something on the Web. you have to sign up for Facebook.
Despite misgivings, I started a bare bones Facebook page a couple of years ago and, within a few minutes, some guy I didn’t know from Adam in Thailand wanted to be my friend, as did a few other people who I had never heard of.
That was it for me! I took down my Facebook page.
I understood that Facebook, due to prior agreements with the gov’t concerning privacy, could be fined up $40 000 for wrongly violating the privacy of one its users.
They should be fined. Maximum. 80 million * 40k = $3.2 tillion — US gov’t becomes new owner of Facebook.
Because FB refused to obey the law.
I think FB could be in trouble here. They’ve avoided libel charges in the past over what’s posted because hey, it’s just a publisher of material. Once you start exercising editorial control over what’s allowed to get published, that protection goes away.
Snow on Pine Says:
April 10th, 2018 at 11:18 am
Increasingly, if you want to do something on the Web. you have to sign up for Facebook.
They use twitter/FB as token logins. Doesn’t mean you need your real name and social contacts. People have made fake passports before, but apparently that doesn’t make sense to those who like Obeying the Government all day long.
It is too much work! Let’s outsource it to Big Brother! We feel scared, Big Brother needs an armed goon squad to protect us! We need the media to report the truth to us because we are too lazy to get out and do our own research!
A bunch of American slaves are surprised that they are slaves. It is quite amusing.
Look forward to the much anticipated Christian like Beast system, where you won’t even be able to buy or sell without your online identity tokens.
There is nothing more dangerous to a lefty than a black conservative. Except maybe two black conservatives!
Richard Saunders:
Two black female conservatives.
The Consensus strikes back…
Carbon and Soy are a conservative threat to the political environment and digestible diversity, respectively.
Griffin Says:
April 10th, 2018 at 12:41 am
* *
I’ve been playing with the thumbnails today, and they have no noticeable connection to what I actually access. Won’t go into the long details, but I can’t get anything to populate the empty places after a long afternoon of reading, going to some sites multiple times.
If you right-click the browser shortcut, it brings up “most often visited” which was stable all day with my four top tabs (despite not going to some of them but once today), and Salon, which I only went to 3 times this morning — far less than PLB and many others.
Just now I clicked to check the wording, and even that list is MIA.
Whatever the heck Google is using as an algorithm, it makes no sense to “reasonable people” —
http://dailycaller.com/2018/04/10/diamond-and-silk-facebook-ban/
“A Facebook spokeswoman told TheDCNF that such an answer to their inquiries was a mistake.
“We have communicated directly with Diamond And Silk about this issue,” the company representative said. “The message they received last week was inaccurate and not reflective of the way we communicate with our community and the people who run Pages on our platform. We have provided them with more information about our policies and the tools that are applicable to their Page and look forward to the opportunity to speak with them.”
…
Nevertheless, as previously reported, it appears that there is either a dissonance in judgment by Facebook’s content moderators, or a caving to pressure, as thousands of Diamond and Silk supporters clamored over allegedly unfair, unequal treatment.”
This is actually the most disturbing thing I’ve read today on FB aka Frankenstein’s Blog-monster.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/04/zuckerberg-speaks.php
Commenter says:
“I once posted a link to an item from “The People Cube” and within minutes I saw that a post of mine on FB had been deleted for content. Which was confusing since I hadn’t made any posts on FB for a while. When I checked it out I found some phantom FB user found my reference to People’s Cube “offensive” but again, I had posted nothing on FB. The posting was HERE – at Power Line. But because they are connected it showed up on FB and some automatic mechanism reacted by “taking down” a FB posting that didn’t exist on a complaint from a user that doesn’t exist!
It was the weirdest thing. THAT was pretty scary.”
Along with some discussion of Zuck’s testimony, especially the disingenuous replies to Sen. Cruz, this exchange was more positive:
“Gotta love it when the same people who constantly allow our government to invade our privacy and kill the fourth amendment via the NSA and other alphabet soup agencies play this little charade with people like Zuckerberg. Drip, drip, drip (hypocrisy). What is most ironic is that I log into Facebook in order to post this.
…
So right after posting I see Scott Johnson’s post that Powerline is dumping FB for comment log-ins.”
I stopped commenting at HotAir when they went to FB logins, and then stopped reading there altogether.
Funny how that works.
physics geek Says:
April 10th, 2018 at 12:59 pm
I think FB could be in trouble here. They’ve avoided libel charges in the past over what’s posted because hey, it’s just a publisher of material. Once you start exercising editorial control over what’s allowed to get published, that protection goes away.
* * *
There’s an old proverb that says you can’t pick up just one end of a stick.
However, although this seems reasonable to most people, a good lawyer will manage to fix it so FB can be a censor-publisher without liability.
After all, we have a Supreme Court that concluded with a straight face that a fine that wasn’t a tax for purpose A was indeed a tax for purpose B.
Is there nothing that The Law can’t do!!
BTW, if FB is walking back their banning, D&S don’t know about it.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/04/10/facebook-reconsidering-labeling-diamond-silk-unsafe-damage-done/
“Let us be clear; @facebook has NOT communicated directly with @DiamondandSilk. We haven’t spoken to Mark Zuckerberg or any representative from Facebook.”
7:04 AM – Apr 10, 2018
And there is this little bit of a wrinkle:
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/04/08/facebook-donated-46-55-members-committee-will-question-zuckerberg/
“According to a USA Todayanalysis, members on this year’s House Energy and Commerce Committee have received roughly $381,000 in Facebook-related contributions since 2007 with the average Republican getting $6,800 and the average Democrat getting $6,750. The report was based on data from the Center for Responsive Politics.”
Interesting numbers follow.
Since D&S have become the Face of the users damaged by Facebook, here are a couple of other posts.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/oops-mark-zuckerberg-surprised-to-learn-the-terms-of-service-for-your-digital-life?ref=home
“It was nearly two hours in before Zuckerberg appeared to be taken by surprise. That was when Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) interrogated Zuckerberg about the app at the center of Facebook’s current troubles. Called “This Is Your Digital Life,” that app was used by data researcher Aleksandr Kogan to gather profile information on as many as 87 million Facebook users.
Facebook’s position is that Kogan, through his firm GSR, violated Facebook’s rules when he transferred the harvested data to the shady campaign consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. But Blumenthal produced a poster board blow-up showing an excerpt from the app’s terms-of-service, which explicitly spelled out Kogan’s intentions.: “[Y]ou permit GSR to edit, copy, disseminate, publish, transfer, append or merge with other databases, sell, license (by whatever means and on whatever terms) and archive your contribution and data.”
According to Blumenthal, Kogan submitted that language to Facebook’s app review team as part of the approval process. “Facebook was on notice that he could sell that user information,” Blumenthal charged. “Have you see those terms of service before?”
“I have not,” Zuckerberg admitted, adding later, “It certainly appears that we should have been aware that this app developer submitted a term that was in conflict with the rules of the platform.”
The Kogan app isn’t the only time Facebook missed an opportunity to head off a privacy disaster. As The Daily Beast reported, the company separately ignored a security researcher’s 2013 report that a feature of Facebook’s search engine could be used to illicitly compile data on virtually all its users. In a written statement ahead of his testimony, Zuckerberg admitted the search engine loophole was later abused in exactly that way.”
[see the next link for that oopsie]
https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-knew-people-were-stealing-your-phone-number-in-2013?ref=home
“Facebook was warned five years ago that the “reverse-lookup” feature in its search engine could be used to harvest names, profiles, and phone numbers for virtually all its users. But the company ignored the red flags until last week, after it happened.
In prepared testimony to Congress released Monday, Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that malefactors had used the reverse-lookup “to link people’s public Facebook information to a phone number,” he wrote (PDF). “When we found out about the abuse, we shut this feature down.” He said that Facebook only discovered the incidents two weeks ago.
…
But Zuckerberg’s written testimony reveals for the first time that it was phone number lookups that were used in the large scale scraping. That’s a more potent weapon for bulk harvesting, because a data miner can programatically cycle through every possible phone number to get a complete corpus. With some exceptions–custom privacy settings or accounts with no phone number attached–sequential mining would yield every Facebook profile.
…
Though Facebook is professing surprise at the data spill, in 2013 security researcher Bennett Haselton warned Facebook publicly and privately of this exact scenario.”
Another entry in the anti-privacy charges against the Big Media companies.
https://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2018/04/11/the-student-datamining-scandal-under-our-noses-n2469754?utm_source=TopBreakingNewsCarousel&utm_medium=story&utm_campaign=BreakingNewsCarousel
“The recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act further enshrined government collection of personally identifiable information — including data collected on attitudes, values, beliefs and dispositions — and allows release of the data to third-party contractors thanks to Obama-era loopholes carved into the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.
And the so-called school-to-work pipeline creates endless avenues into taxpayer coffers for firms pitching data-gathering initiatives to “align” student learning with “skill sets” and “competencies” desired by corporations.
…
Under the guise of customizable assessments, public and private preschools in Colorado experimented with toddlers whose student activities and social/emotional behaviors were tracked using the TS Gold (Teaching Strategies Gold) system — funded with $30 million in Race to the Top subsidies under the Obama administration. As I reported in 2014, parent Lauren Coker discovered that TS Gold assessors in her son’s Aurora, Colorado, public preschool had recorded information about his trips to the bathroom, his hand-washing habits and his ability to pull up his pants.
Sunny Flynn, a mom with kids in Jefferson County, Colorado, asked all the right questions: “What security measures are being used to protect this data? Who exactly has access to this data? How long will the data be stored? What is the proven benefit of a kindergarten teacher putting all of this data into a database?”
With little public oversight, Google has infiltrated schools through its “free” Google Apps for Education suite. As I’ve reported previously, Google is building brand loyalty through its questionable certification program that essentially turns teachers into tax-subsidized lobbyists for the company. GAFE enrollees are “trained” on Google products, earn certification, and then open up consultancy businesses and bill their school districts (i.e., the public) to hawk Google’s suite of products to other colleagues.
And this week, 23 parent and watchdog groups filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission alleging that Google is violating child protection laws by collecting personal data of and advertising to those aged under 13.
Over the past four years, Google has admitted “scanning and indexing” student email messages sent using GAFE and data mining student users for commercial gain when they use their accounts for noneducational purposes. ”
I’m sure everybody promised solemnly that they would take good care of that data, and never ever use it for any kind of nasty profit-seeking purposes (capitalism is evil, remember?) and certainly never let it out of their own greedy little hands.
Yeah, right.
I’m feeling very artful today, but there doesn’t seem to be any lack of articles about the leftist bias of our social media platforms.
They have been engaged in (literally) deplatforming conservatives for as long as they have been around.
If you look at the entire, very long, front-page list, most of the early reports are outside of America (only to be expected); the later ones are increasingly US focused.
Gee, I wonder why.
https://freeourinternet.org/campaigns/report-the-bans/
If you ever had any doubt about the tech-left’s true intentions regarding freedom of speech and an open internet, this amazing admission from Google Chairman Eric Schmidt on March 23, 2017, should settle the matter.
…
We’re regularly updating the list below of the tech-left’s coordinated campaign to silence free speech on the internet. As you scroll through the more than 100 examples below, we urge you to keep Eric Schmidt’s words top of mind. “Take if off the page… Right? Put it somewhere else. Make it harder to find.”
…
The tech-left’s assault on free speech — a historical record: [this is the beginning of the list, links are included in the original page]
11/29/07 — Google shuts down YouTube account of Egyptian human rights activist Wael Abbas
4/9/08 — Christian group sues Google after the search engine refuses to accept its pro-life advertisements.
10/3/08 — Google’s YouTube censors comedian’s anti-Sharia video titled “Welcome to Saudi Britain”.
…
[first listing – but not the last! – for USA]
3/16/10 — Technology journalist blacklisted and removed from Google News for articles critical of the company.
7/22/10 — Facebook deletes post by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for criticizing construction of a mosque near Ground Zero.
7/26/10 — Facebook bans the word “Palestinian” in page titles.
1/28/11 — Google autocomplete blocks the phrase “Google and crime.”
9/12/11 — InfoWars reporter warned by Facebook not to use the social network to express his political opinions after he posted a story about whether living off the grid was now being treated as a crime.
…
7/5/12 — Google censors information about guns in Google shopping.
9/14/12 — Google blocks access to “Innocence of Muslims” video in several countries.
…
5/28/13 — Facebook suspends the account of Andrea Lalama for posting a picture of her two kids holding a sign protesting Monsanto.
[so far the only one banning a leftist position, unless you count the dropping of pro-Bernie material during the 2016 campaign; some usually pro-leftist material is banned in foreign countries, such as pro-gay stuff in the Middle and Far east]
5/29/13 — Facebook blocks Fox News commentator Todd Starnes for “violating community standards” for his post supporting guns, Chick-fil-A, Jesus.
7/3/13 — Facebook blocks LibertyNews story for sharing a story critical of abortion.
…
12/20/14 — Facebook bans Russian page supporting Vladimir Putin critic Alexei Navalny. [interesting…]*
1/28/15 — One week after expressing support for free speech in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Facebook begins censoring images of Muhammad.
…
3/19/15 — Leaked report Federal Trade Commission (FTC) staff report alleges that Google uses an algorithm to deliberately manipulate search results to favor their own products and services over those of competitors.
…
9/27/15 — German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg caught on an open mic agreeing to censor Facebook content critical of European immigration policy.
12/8/15 — Google Chairman Eric Schmidt calls for “hate speech spell-checker” to be implemented on social and search platforms to “nudge” users away from unwelcome forms of expression.
…
12/15/15 — Google’s YouTube suspends video channel of investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson. Claims channel was suspended in error.
…
1/1/16 — Facebook takes down picture of 2012 Donald Trump campaign button from “Wake Up America” page for violating community standards for nudity, even though the picture contained no nudity whatsoever.
1/9/16 — Twitter “unverifies” official account of Breitbart tech editor. [that was Milo Y – he figures prominently in the long list]
…
2/20/16 — Conservative blogger Stacy McCain banned by Twitter. No reason given.
2/29/16 — Bernie Sanders supporters allege that Twitter is removing hash tags critical of Hillary Clinton. [what I said above]
3/4/16 — Facebook’s Instagram blocks links to competitors Snapchat and Telegram.
…
4/24/16 — Donald Trump shadowbanned by Twitter after posting a tweet that “the establishment and special interests are absolutely killing our country.”
…
5/31/16 — Google demotes pro-Brexit/Euroskeptic websites by pushing them down in search results.
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6/10/16 — Investigative video released showing how Google manipulates search results to favor Hillary Clinton.
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6/22/16 — Anti-Hillary Clinton game removed from Google Play Store, but “Punch the Trump” game remains.
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7/20/16 — Twitter bans conservative activist Milo Yiannopoulos.
7/23/16 — #DNCLeaks disappears from trending news on Twitter after Wikileaks releases emails.
7/23/16 — Gmail users claim Trump emails sent automatically to Spam folders.
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7/27/16 — Google excludes Donald Trump from “presidential candidates” search
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8/2/16 — Hugo-nominated author Brian Niemeier “shadow-banned” on Twitter.
8/2/16 — Facebook bans “Mothers Against Radical Islam” after posting a video critical of media coverage suggesting criticism of radical Islam was Islamophobic.
8/2/16 — Facebook blocks radio host Michael Savage after he posts story of migrant murderer in Germany.
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9/2/16 — Google’s YouTube “demonetizes” several hundred video channels including a channel with a video about… freedom of the press.
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9/22/16 — Twitter bans well-known journalist and free speech advocate Glenn Reynolds. Account later restored.
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10/6/16 — Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, alleges that he is shadowbanned on Twitter after requesting that his followers tweet examples of Hillary Clinton supporters being violent against Trump supporters.
10/12/16 — Google’s YouTube censors conservative video channel by labeling it “restricted adult content.”
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11/2/16 — Google’s YouTube censors PragerU video criticizing the left for censorship.
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11/16/16 — Google and Facebook pledge to defund conservative news sites as “fake news” by denying them access to the companies’ ad networks.
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12/29/16 — Almost 1000 of Facebook’s top page owners whose pages were removed from the social network fight back against Facebook’s increasing censorship.
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3/1/17 — Google, Facebook, AFP and the BBC collude in launching campaign to tell voters “who to trust” in French presidential election.
3/9/17 — Twitter suspends account of conservative YouTuber Hunter Avallone. No reason given.
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4/17/17 — Google admits to censoring InfoWars. Claims it will stop.
7/18/17 — Over two dozen Catholic pages were blocked by Facebook after being “suspected of suspicious activity.”
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10/9/17 — Twitter shuts down Congressman Marsha Blackburn’s campaign’s ability to promote her announcement video because of pro-life statements.
10/28/17 — Twitter bans political insider Roger Stone.
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10/31/17 — During a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee into Russian activity in the 2016 election, Twitter admits to blocking anti-Hillary Clinton tweets.
11/2/17 — The president’s Twitter handle, @RealDonaldTrump, is deactivated for 11 minutes.
12/9/17 — Google announces it will no longer offer YouTube on Amazon platforms, violating the principles it purports to champion through “net neutrality.”
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4/2/18 — Ads posted by the Franciscan University of Steubanville, a Catholic College, promoting the school’s online Masters programs are blocked by Facebook for including “excessively violent” content. [it was a picture of a classic stylized Cross]
4/9/18 — Facebook blocks notifications of new posts to followers of Conservative internet pundits Diamond and Silk, citing the duo’s “content and brand” as “unsafe to the community.”
* * *
A lot of these were familiar, which means I spend too much time on the internet.
*A Russian investor has a big stake in Facebook; I’l try and find the story again; I posted a link earlier this week.
AesopFan April 11th, 2018 at 4:02 am —
“After all, we have a Supreme Court that concluded with a straight face that a fine that wasn’t a tax for purpose A was indeed a tax for purpose B.”
What the Supremes ruled was that even though Congress said Obamacare was not a tax, it in fact was. I used to agree that Roberts’ reasoning was wrong, but over time, I realized his analysis was correct — Obamacare is a tax. It is a tax on the young and healthy to pay for the healthcare of the old and sick.
Richard Saunders:
Actually, it’s a capitation tax. See this explanation:
These stories are getting cross-linked in my mind.
I meant to post this here, as a follow-up to my long list of media bias incidents.
http://www.neoneocon.com/2018/04/10/obamas-illegal-campaign-contributions-vs-trumps/#comment-2381389
AesopFan Says:
April 11th, 2018 at 4:24 pm
Those Russian investors in Facebook have been there a long time.
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