Legal Insurrection readers are acutely aware of the deplatforming and silencing of conservative voices across social media and via outlets like Amazon.
The latest victim to get slammed by the iron-hand of Big Tech is President Trump’s chief social media guru, Dan Scavino. Facebook blocked his account for simply responding to a question from a reader.
The excuse was that his remark seemed like spam.
Scavino is responsible for several of the president’s and White House’s social media accounts. He has been with the president for years.His accounts have a tremendous following, so a block on Facebook has a big reach. Already there are over 750 comments on his page, including:“Cory Critser Dan Scavino Daniel Scavino Jr. … I think it’s time for some Senate hearings with Facebook on there attempts to influence the election.”
On a smaller scale, my personal website (Temple of Mut) was temporarily blocked from being linked in Facebook. The reason I was given: The website did not meet community standards.
True . . . if your community consists merely of climate-change cultists and gender justice warriors. However, Facebook is supposed to be playing by the rules of a platform and not a publisher, so my science-based and news-focused content should be acceptable under any reasonable standard.
Additionally, the Canto Talk Show program that I help host on occasion was also hit with a Facebook ban. Silvio Canto, the mild-mannered, thoughtful host and author of historic, sports, and political analysis was deeply troubled when his show promotion posts were deemed “inappropriate.”
I am very angry. It took me several hours to calm down. They banned posts on World War II and baseball. What is offensive about that. Was it because I actually called Hitler “Hitler” instead of Trump? And my baseball piece was about Hank Aaron. How is that not appropriate? [transcript provided by author]
Barry Jacobson, a former Green Beret who fought to defend the Constitution (including his First Amendment rights), was also impacted by Facebook censorship. The social media giant recently stopped the promotion of his military history podcasts.
That Facebook deems discussion of WW-2 “in violation of community standards” is not only astonishing; it begs the question, what standard are they upholding? Ignorance? Put another way, is the banning of all discussion of the horrors caused by the Nazis somehow going to further the cause (which I assume Facebook supports) of hindering the spread of Nazi ideology?
I suspect that Facebook has tweaked its algorithms in such a way that anything even mildly conservative is now flagged. Donald Trump, Jr. recently published a detailed piece decrying Big Tech’s censorship of conservatives, which has steadily become more flagrant and overt.
Facebook appears to have deliberately tailored its algorithm to recognize the syntax and style popular among conservatives in order to “deboost” that content. “Mainstream media,” “SJW” (Social Justice Warrior) and “red pill” — all terms that conservatives often use to express themselves — were listed as red flags, according to the former Facebook insider.Facebook engineers even cited BlazeTV host Lauren Chen’s video criticizing the social justice movement as an example of the kind of “red pills” that users just aren’t allowed to drop anymore. Mainstream conservative content was strangled in real time, yet fringe leftists such as the Young Turks enjoy free rein on the social media platform.
I would argue that the situation is even worse than the president’s son has stated if history-based blogs are now being silenced.
For those of you interested, listen to this Canto Talk podcast reviewing the current status of the Battle against Big Tech.
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