A Facebook staff chat board reportedly show that some workers at the social media giant had wanted to censor Breitbart News over its accurate reporting of riots of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The Wall Street Journal just published a detailed story substantiating what many have suspected of Facebook, that it’s been censoring right-wing content.
Admittedly, this finding is in “dog bites man: terrain. Gizmodo had ascertained that through an analysis of “Trending Topics” in May 2016, meaning well before the Trump win led Democratic/establishment screeching about Russian influence and clamping down on opinion suddenly deemed responsible and necessary.
The social media platform, Facebook is after all utilized by tens of millions of People — virtually all of whom are influenced by what the platform permits them to see by way of its use of algorithms and censorship.
The Journal story relies on internal chats and focuses on Breitbart as an object of Facebook restrictions. The picture is not pretty.
Facebook appears to lack any clear-cut policies, which means employees’ views and arguments held way too much sway. Fox also gets hated on by Facebook staffers, but there’s no indication in this story that there’s any smoking gun as far as Fox is concerned.
The ability the company has to influence public opinion and sway elections became apparent last year when Big Tech companies ganged up to de-platform former President Donald Trump.
That occurred just months after those companies, Facebook among them, prevented voters from hearing about scandals relating to the family of now-President Joe Biden.
It was in June when some Facebook employees reportedly wanted to control the narrative over riots that sprang up across America after George Floyd died while in the custody of the Minneapolis Police Department
When Breitbart accurately reported on fires set by arsonists, some Facebook staffers allegedly voted to strip the company of its ability to operate as a free and fair news publisher — which it is.
More of this story from Western Journal:
The Journal obtained leaked conversations about blocking the company from reaching its audience while much of the country was burned and looted from Los Angeles to New York.
The desire to block people from getting accurate news was of course rooted in accusations that Breitbart’s reporting was racist.
“Get Breitbart out of News Tab,” one of the Facebook employees reportedly wrote in a message to others.
That person used headlines from Breitbart’s site, including, “Minneapolis Mayhem: Riots in Masks,” “Massive Looting, Buildings in Flames, Bonfires!” and “BLM Protesters Pummel Police Cars on 101.”
There was nothing racist, hyperbolic or inaccurate about those headlines. Example:
I’m manning Breitbart News’ livewire coverage on the violent protests in Minneapolis and St. Paul in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Tune in below. https://t.co/vgImaB1lg6
— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) May 29, 2020
But the company’s reporting was problematic for some who worked at Facebook, the Journal reported.
The same person who wanted to yank Breitbart’s ability to be listed as a news publisher allegedly argued those headlines were “emblematic of a concerted effort at Breitbart and similarly hyperpartisan sources (none of which belong in News Tab) to paint Black Americans and Black-led movements in a very negative way.”
According to the report, another employee said that by punishing Breitbart for covering the violent riots, Facebook would be risking repercussions.
“We’re scared of political backlash if we enforce our policies without exemptions,” another person with the company reportedly wrote.
According to the Journal, a senior researcher for the company even noted in one message that if the conservative publisher were to be punished for over-sharing news which people didn’t trust, other outlets might come under fire.
“I can also tell you that we saw drops in trust in CNN 2 years ago: would we take the same approach for them too?” that person wrote.
None of this reporting is the least bit surprising, especially when considering the censorship of conservatives online throughout the last year. Big Tech has it out for enemies of the Democratic Party and the narratives which are crafted by the establishment media.
Breitbart called looting exactly what it is in the outlet’s coverage of the riots. That countered the establishment media narrative that gatherings where people were harmed or killed — and where the property was stolen, damaged, or destroyed — were “mostly peaceful.”
Watch it here: WesternJournal/Video
Source: WesternJournal
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