FACEBOOK “WHISTLEBLOWER” CENSORED NY POST HUNTER BIDEN EXPOSÉ LAST FALL:
Human Events has learned that according to her personal advocacy website, Frances Haugen states that in 2020 she was a member of Facebook’s internal Civic Integrity team. That means in all likelihood she was part of the team that made the controversial decision to ban the bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story by the New York Post from Facebook in October 2020, a crucial point of the election. This was one of the most significant October Surprises in U.S. political history, and Facebook and Twitter made the decision to ban it without evidence amid rumors that the laptop was tied to Russian intelligence. Those rumors ended up being disinformation, and were all proved false.
For now, Haugen continues to be represented by Jen Psaki’s PR firm and Eric Ciaramella’s legal team.
As Glenn Greenwald writes, “Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor:”
When Facebook, Google, Twitter and other Silicon Valley social media companies were created, they did not set out to become the nation’s discourse police. Indeed, they affirmatively wanted not to do that. Their desire to avoid that role was due in part to the prevailing libertarian ideology of a free internet in that sub-culture. But it was also due to self-interest: the last thing social media companies wanted to be doing is looking for ways to remove and block people from using their product and, worse, inserting themselves into the middle of inflammatory political controversies. Corporations seek to avoid angering potential customers and users over political stances, not courting that anger.
This censorship role was not one they so much sought as one that was foisted on them. It was not really until the 2016 election, when Democrats were obsessed with blaming social media giants (and pretty much everyone else except themselves) for their humiliating defeat, that pressure began escalating on these executives to start deleting content liberals deemed dangerous or false and banning their adversaries from using the platforms at all. As it always does, the censorship began by targeting widely disliked figures — Milo Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones and others deemed “dangerous” — so that few complained (and those who did could be vilified as sympathizers of the early offenders). Once entrenched, the censorship net then predictably and rapidly spread inward (as it invariably does) to encompass all sorts of anti-establishment dissidents on the right, the left, and everything in between. And no matter how much it widens, the complaints that it is not enough intensify. For those with the mentality of a censor, there can never be enough repression of dissent. And this plot to escalate censorship pressures found the perfect vessel in this stunningly brave and noble Facebook heretic who emerged this week from the shadows into the glaring spotlight. She became a cudgel that Washington politicians and their media allies could use to beat Facebook into submission to their censorship demands.
In this dynamic we find what the tech and culture writer Curtis Yarvin calls “power leak.” This is a crucial concept for understanding how power is exercised in American oligarchy, and Yarvin’s brilliant essay illuminates this reality as well as it can be described. Hyperbolically arguing that “Mark Zuckerberg has no power at all,” Yarvin points out that it may appear that the billionaire Facebook CEO is powerful because he can decide what will and will not be heard on the largest information distribution platform in the world. But in reality, Zuckerberg is no more powerful than the low-paid content moderators whom Facebook employs to hit the “delete” or “ban” button, since it is neither the Facebook moderators nor Zuckerberg himself who is truly making these decisions. They are just censoring as they are told, in obedience to rules handed down from on high. It is the corporate press and powerful Washington elites who are coercing Facebook and Google to censor in accordance with their wishes and ideology upon pain of punishment in the form of shame, stigma and even official legal and regulatory retaliation.
The DNC wants Facebook banning conservatives; the DNC-MSM wants them to no longer be an end-around to their propaganda, Stephen Miller writes: Blame legacy media for spreading disinformation, not Facebook. Lurid tales of border patrol agents whipping migrants show how badly they get it wrong:
Journalists who target Facebook for elevating voices like Ben Shapiro’s or Breitbart‘s spare little introspection for their own roles in the prevalence of misinformation. Now, the audience is moving on, and they will continue to do so for as long as outlets like the Washington Post behave in this way.
A better solution for Margaret Sullivan and her exclusive band of media gatekeepers would be not regulation of Facebook but self-regulation of themselves. That would mean taking a hard look in the mirror and asking why exactly trust in their institutions is at an all-time low.
When traditional news outlets start caring about truth again, perhaps the audience will as well. Until then, Facebook will continue to dictate what information is valuable, and Margaret Sullivan and company will be left holding the imaginary whip.
But traditional news outlets are too in-bed with the Democratic Party to change. At the end of every presidential election, there are a few “we must do better next time” articles. But they’re invariably preceded by moments such as these:
UPDATE: Heh, indeed:
