The sad thing is that there are people out there who probably think Zuckerberg is doing God's work by stamping out conservative viewpoints. It is painfully ironic: The very notion of policing and suppressing alternative points of view is a cornerstone of authoritarianism -- meanwhile, Zuckerberg recently declared that fighting against such authoritarian behavior was the "struggle of our time." Newsflash Zuck: You're the tyrant, not those who don't agree with you.
Discussing the problem of "authoritarianism" while actively suppressing "political dissidents" is as Orwellian as you can get -- but given that Facebook is trying to position itself as a real-life, propaganda-pushing "Ministry Of Truth," it couldn't be more befitting of the company.
And Facebook's founder recently revealed that he plans on going even deeper into the rabbit hole, by furthering his company's acts of censorship against those who dare to challenge left-wing dogma.
At an "off-the-record" meeting with a select few media outlets, Zuckerberg announced his plans to "dial up" the suppression of certain news outlets that the Facebook gremlins have decided can't be trusted. ,"We put [that data] into the system, and it is acting as a boost or a suppression, and we’re going to dial up the intensity of that over time,” Zuckerberg said of the company's censorship algorithms.
And again, using that infamous doublespeak to hide the true intent of his actions, Zuckerberg added, "We feel like we have a responsibility to further [break] down polarization and find common ground." How is censoring conservative speech "breaking down polarization" or finding "common ground?"
Despite what the Zuck says, Facebook has no interest in common ground. Conservative outlets have been the hardest hit by Facebook's suppression efforts. As a recent report by The Outline shows, even mainstream outlets like Fox News have seen a serious dip in engagement on Facebook. In about one month, Fox News' Facebook engagement dropped by 26 percent. Compared to liberal mainstream outlets like The Washington Post and The New York Times actually experienced increases in Facebook engagement, while CNN had a small drop of 2 percent.
As Daily Caller explains, Facebook first slashed the news articles' share of the newsfeed from 5 percent to 4 percent. After that, they began boosting the presence of select outlets -- and the results of those efforts are clear. Liberal media is getting the lion's share of Facebook presence.
And if all this isn't alarming enough -- just wait: Facebook has repeatedly said that they will not be publicizing their list of "trustworthy" news networks. Perhaps because then their bias would be proven, instead of just suspected? The social media giant claims to have surveyed users about different sites and their trustworthiness, but that isn't exactly indicative of anything -- other than the individuals' own biases. If survey data was collected in say, liberal California, the results of that survey data would be far different than those gathered from a conservative area in the South.
In other words, the very concept of using individuals' opinions or feelings about a given site to gauge its credibility is ridiculous; opinions and feelings aren't facts. And to use the liberal insult du jour -- it's anti-science to use unsubstantiated claims to support your political agenda. [Related: Read more stories on censorship at Censorship.news]
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