Tag: facebook

Facebook rejects “disinformation dozen” narrative (censors them anyway)

In a company blog post, Facebook has addressed and rejected a theory spread by the media and politicians in the US that only 12 people are responsible for as much as 73 percent of what is considered online vaccine misinformation.

The 12 users have been censored anyway, but Facebook is pushing back against the claim that this is what it takes to deal with what the post said is a global problem of coronavirus vaccine misinformation.

Facebook says that the claim about the 12 key “superspreaders of misinformation” is a narrative (the company avoided referring to this narrative as false, using instead the term, “faulty”) that has not passed the test when confronted by evidence.

Nevertheless, Facebook reaffirmed that it has a zero tolerance policy toward what it happens to identify as vaccine misinformation, and announced that more than three dozen pages, groups and Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to the 12 persons have been removed.

The reason given is that these pages and accounts violated Facebook’s policies.

In addition, almost two dozen other pages, groups and accounts have been penalized for their links to the 12 – although logic dictates that they have not been found in violation of Facebook’s policies.

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Biden administration demands Facebook hands over data on “misinformation” and vaccine skeptics

The Biden administration continues to pressure Facebook to collaborate and help it achieve its goals, one of them being to counter COVID vaccine skepticism and get more people in the US vaccinated.

After Biden shockingly denounced Facebook and others as “killing people” because they are allegedly letting COVID misinformation run rampant on their platforms, that pressure now continues in media reports, like the one The Washington Post published, citing three anonymous administration sources.

According to them, The White House and Facebook have had a series of meetings whose aim was to get the social media giant to turn over massive amounts of user data to the government, apparently as a “good will gesture” – since there doesn’t seem to be any legal ground for such a request.

Instead, the “tense” meetings saw the administration’s COVID crew “begging” Facebook to give them access to data showing how many people on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp see content branded as coronavirus misinformation, how many are still undecided whether to get the jab, and also the efficiency of Facebook’s censorship algorithms, i.e., how many people still get to see content that it aims to block.

It’s not obvious why the officials quoted by the article thought Facebook was under obligation to do this, but they accused the company of “hiding, filibustering and deflecting” – while at the same time commending Google and Twitter for apparently being much more accommodating in similar meetings around the same subject.

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Facebook Caves, Bans Accounts Identified by White House

Facebook has taken action against the so-called “disinformation dozen,” a set of accounts publicly identified by the Biden White House as responsible for the majority of alleged coronavirus “disinformation” on the platform.

The Biden administration identified the accounts last month and publicly urged Facebook to take action against them. It appears Facebook has now succumbed to that pressure.

In a statement to CNN, a White House spokesperson said the administration would continue to push for more censorship from social media platforms, and continued to criticize Facebook.

“In the middle of a pandemic, being honest and transparent about the work that needs to be done to protect public health is absolutely vital, but Facebook still refuses to be straightforward about how much misinformation is circulating — and being actively promoted — on their platform,” said the spokesperson.

“It’s on everyone to get this right so we can make sure the American people are getting accurate information to protect the health of themselves and their loved ones — which is why the Administration will continue to push leaders, media outlets, and leading sources of information like Facebook to meet those basic expectations.”

Despite criticizing Facebook, the White House admitted last month that it is in regular contact with the platform to identify and remove posts.

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Facebook “fact checker” worked to bankrupt conservative and indy news sites by convincing advertisers to drop them

Facebook and other social media behemoths have consistently said they’re not biased against conservatives and independent publishers, and just as often as they deny it they are proven to be liars.

That happened again this past week and in a big way.

The National Pulse managed to unearth new evidence indicating that a so-called “fact checker” Facebook and TikTok, among other platforms, “attempted to coerce advertisers into dropping conservative media outlets as clients in social media posts,” the outlet reported.

The site said that it discovered Twitter posts from Lead Stories copy editor Leslie Lapides “follow the outlet’s founder and Editor-in-Chief Alan Duke repeatedly denying allegations of left-wing bias.”

But in fact, despite those denials, Lapides has posted at least four tweets showing support for Sleeping Giants, a left-wing internet activist organization whose members target advertisers seen on conservative sites like Breitbart News.

The activist group, which says it was formed to “make bigotry and sexism less profitable,” is well-known for convincing advertisers to drop listings on right-leaning sites through bullying campaigns, many of which have successfully bankrupted conservative media outlets.

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Anglo-Censored? English History YouTuber Purged from Facebook

Rowsell warned that Facebook censorship has consequences. “This will inevitably negatively impact my earnings but also my social life and that of my wife who uses that platform to stay in touch with her family in Sweden,” he said.

He offered a grim estimation of why he was censored:

“I think this has social implications since I am only posting about historical subjects and not the controversial topics of immigration and vaccines that normally get people banned. I may be the first person banned not for what [I] have said, but for what they suspect me to think. Obviously this isn’t as big a deal as when they banned the President, but can be seen as a next step in their steady decline into totalitarian censorship.”

His videos explored everything from Anglo-Saxon/Norse warriors to the roots of Indo-European pagan religions in India, England and Sweden. 

Videos on his page also range from explorations into niche English rural folklore to speaking with Vedic guru Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya or even traveling to Bali to learn about Balinese Hinduism. He described himself as a YouTuber with “over 10 million views” and said he previously worked for a subsidiary of the World Health organization in Sweden. His academic writings include headlines such as “Gender Roles and Symbolic Meaning in Njáls Saga” and “Representation of Hakon sigurdsson in Viking Age literature,” indicating a clear scholarly background.

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Facebook Flags the Name of a Gardening Tool When Used in a Gardening Group

The Biden White House leans on Facebook to censor your speech online if what you say goes against what the Biden White House wants you to say.

This is not a conspiracy theory. It’s a fact. Let’s see how well Facebook handles the very sensitive topic of policing even non-political speech in a nation that’s built on the principle that speech must be free, and where people have wide varieties of interests that may fall outside Silicon Valley’s collective experiences.

Facebook flagged the word hoe in a gardening group.

Oh. No. They censored “hoe.”

Wait ’til they figure out what people do with certain emojis…

A group called WNY Gardeners has been repeatedly flagged by the social network for “violating community standards,” when its more than 7,500 members discussed the long-handled bladed implement, which is spelled with an “e,” unlike the offensive term.

When one member commented “Push pull hoe!” on a post about preferred weeding tools, Facebook sent a notification that read, “We reviewed this comment and found it goes against our standards for harassment and bullying,” a moderator said.

This is funny and would be a lot funnier if the Biden White House hadn’t deputized Facebook to chase you and me around on its platform if we post something the regime doesn’t like. But it has.

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Facebook faces lawsuit for suspending user who cited lack of evidence for masking children

An influential COVID policy skeptic is threatening to sue Facebook for suspending his account based on a graphic he posted Tuesday, titled “Masking Children is Impractical and Not Backed by Research or Real World Data.”

Justin Hart was identified in a recent MIT paper as one of a handful of “anchors” for the anti-mask network on Twitter. He’s also chief data analyst for the COVID contrarian website Rational Ground.

A warning letter to Facebook from Hart’s lawyers at the Liberty Justice Center said the graphic was “science-based and contains footnotes to scientific evidence supporting its claims.” Facebook issued him a three-day suspension the next day, citing the post as misinformation. The page remains live but the post is no longer there.

Hart’s mask argument is similar to one made recently by University of California San Francisco epidemiologist Vinay Prasad. “No one has any clue” if the benefits of masking children outweigh the risks, he wrote in MedPage Today. “During the last year and half, the scientific community has failed to answer these questions. Failed entirely.”

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