(Congressional Agenda) – For years, the mainstream media has attempted to create a narrative that paints former President Donald Trump as having partnered with Russia in order to rig the 2016 presidential election against Hillary Clinton, who ran for president twice and failed spectacularly both times. This is despite the fact that thorough investigations have been completed, reaching the conclusion that collusion never happened.
So that means no one interfered with our election, right? Wrong. In fact, there has been some election interference, but as it turns out it’s the very left-leaning Facebook, one of the leading social media companies, that stuck their nose where it was absolutely not wanted or needed. And they didn’t just do it once, but at least 39 times.
According to the folks at NewsBusters, “MRC Free Speech America researchers compiled 39 times Facebook was caught interfering in U.S. elections since 2008. The platform’s record of election-interfering censorship began in 2012, reached a crescendo in 2020 and has begun fading somewhat in the early stages of the 2024 electoral cycle. All the while, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly made pro-free speech comments including during his famous 2019 speech at Georgetown University.”
“We can either continue to stand for free expression understanding its messiness but believing that the long journey towards greater progress requires confronting ideas that challenge us. Or we can decide that the cost is simply too great,” Zuckerberg went on to say. “I’m here today because I believe that we must continue to stand for free expression.”
The boy billionaire also referred to any sort of politically-motivated censorship as “dangerous,” stating that Facebook, along with other social media platforms, should not be trying to act like the “arbiter of truth.” Agreed. They are most definitely not the keepers of truth and they shouldn’t be trying to slap digital duct tape over the mouths of those who disagree with progressivism. But despite his comments, from 2012 to 2024, Zuck’s company has waffled back and forth between a hands-off approach, to getting directly involved in elections with policy changes and censoring candidates and even ideas.
Here’s a list of MRC’s findings provided by NewsBusters:
“In 2012, Facebook suspended a Veteran PAC for a meme drawing attention to the attack on Benghazi. Just over a week before the 2012 presidential election, Facebook suspended the account of Special Operations Speaks, a veteran-led PAC. The group had posted a meme reminding its followers that Navy SEALs were denied backup during the tragic terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The meme showed pictures of then-President Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden along with the words “Obama called on the SEALs and THEY got bin Laden. When the SEALs called on Obama THEY GOT DENIED,” Breitbart News reported. Facebook removed the post, which it claimed “violate[d] Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities,” according to screenshots Breitbart News included in its reporting. The page administrator proceeded to repost the meme, which was subsequently also removed. After Breitbart News ran the story, then-Facebook Manager Andrew Noyes responded to the accusation denying all fault. “I assure you that removing the image was not an act of censorship on our part. This was an error and we apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused,” he reportedly wrote.”
“In 2016, Facebook censored then-Democratic Party candidate for president Bernie Sanders and “conservative topics” and news. Facebook used to have a trending section on its website that included trending news manually curated by contractors. Several of the curators who worked for Facebook in 2014 and 2015 told Gizmodo the articles that appeared in Facebook’s Trending News section often depended on the biases of the curator and what Facebook wanted to be trending at the time. “Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending,” a former curator who asked to remain anonymous said. “I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz.” Stories about then-presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) were also reportedly excluded. Facebook’s anti-spam algorithm also flagged many different Facebook groups, including six groups created for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) supporters, in the Democratic Party primary race against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.”
Another example comes from 2018 when Facebook silenced several candidates running for Congressional seats and a few vying for state legislatures. Facebook took down ads for Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn who was then a congresswoman running for Senate, Rep. Matt Rosendale, a Republican from Montana, and Michigan Senate Republican candidate Aric Nesbitt. The social media platform also censored a few ads promoting policies that were pro-border security and financed by then-President Donald Trump.
In 2020, Facebook went crazy with the censorship, apparently on a power trip in their mission to try to destroy Trump during the presidential election. Posts and ads from Trump, who, again, was a sitting president, were censored and taken down on four different occasions. They also removed seven ads that were paid for by folks and groups on the right. One of the ad campaigns Facebook targeted was censored a month before the election. The ad itself noted the inconsistency of Democrats who were supportive of COVID lockdowns, but against securing the border.
“In 2024, Facebook and Instagram are limiting users’ access to political content. Meta already began limiting its distribution of political content in 2022 but has continued to lean into that in the lead-up to the 2024 election. In February, Meta announced that Instagram and Threads (a new social media platform owned by Meta) will no longer recommend political content by default, but users can opt in to having such content promoted to them. “If you decide to follow accounts that post political content, we don’t want to get between you and their posts, but we also don’t want to proactively recommend political content from accounts you don’t follow,” Instagram wrote in a blog. “So we’re extending our existing approach to how we treat political content – we won’t proactively recommend content about politics on recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads.” Although the move sounds harmless, it makes it more difficult for those who produce political content to grow their page and for more viewers to decide for themselves whether or not they want to follow that content. The platform has also censored GOP presidential candidate Larry Elder, Democrat-turned-Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.”
If Facebook wants to gain back any sort of trust from users, they ought to put together a bipartisan commission that will address election interference and any censorship issues that have been outlined by Newsbusters.
Will that happen?
Doubtful.
Copyright 2024. CongressionalAgenda.com
