“We have called the Kenosha shooting a mass murder and are removing posts of support for the shooter,” Facebook announced just a week after the event, as it launched a truly epic censorship campaign in flagrant contradiction to its support declared free of charge. speech.
Just to start: killing two people is mass murder now? Of course, it looks like the staff at the social media giant just searched for the closest excuse to delete posts that conflict with their personal biases – and no boss bothered to correct the call.
The blackout went a long way: Facebook actively monitored its users for pro-Kyle Rittenhouse posts and removed the content. He even targeted articles by jurists arguing the merits of his self-defense case.
And it was hard to see even the things he hadn’t killed instantly. “One of the great things they did was manipulate the search engine so you couldn’t even find any references to Kyle Rittenhouse,” Dan Gainor, vice president of the Media Research Center, told The Post. . “They are out of touch with normal people.”
More broadly, the company explained its blackout as follows: “We do not allow symbols, praise or support of dangerous individuals or organizations on Facebook. We define as dangerous things like: terrorist activity, hatred or organized violence, mass or serial murder, human trafficking, criminal or harmful activity.
In other words, he found Rittenhouse guilty of crossing some of those lines months before he spent his day in court (where he won) – and did his best to s ‘ensure that he would be found guilty by the court of public opinion by throwing out almost all the arguments and evidence of the defense.
We also strongly doubt that Facebook will enforce its supposed ban on supporting “dangerous individuals or organizations”, “organized hatred” or “criminal or harmful activity” with any consistency. Too many of these terms are far too vague: a legitimate protest, for example, can be technically criminal, and accusations of “organized hatred” are all too common.
A truly neutral standard here is the one GoFundMe enforced: It cut all defense funds from Rittenhouse, claiming that its terms of service “prohibit raising funds for the legal defense of an alleged violent crime.” As long as he does it for all of those funds, it’s not biased.
But Facebook staff just couldn’t resist choosing sides. As one employee put it in internal discussions obtained by The Post: “Employees are drunk on the absolute power to control civic education in America, without ever having to go to a voting booth (if voting is even an option. ). “
Social media now enjoys various legal protections by claiming to be “neutral platforms”. Yet Big Tech is developing a strong track record of suppressing the truth in the service of a clear political bias. Something must change.
