Censorship of RT: Facebook is a Collective Jackass.



Maybe getting your news from social media is not such a good idea. FPM.news has learned that Facebook has been conducting a heavy censorship campaign against many reporters. Around the world, starting from the White House, violence (both verbal and physical) against critical reportage has swelled to alarming heights. Journos are being assaulted, detained and murdered for doing their job. Facebook’s encouragement of violating the rights of journalistic free speech has apparently alarmed important media outlets.

There’s an old saying: “Don’t pick a fight with a person who buys their ink by the barrel.” For this alone, the scurrilous censorship of RT journalists deserves some name-calling directed at Facebook.  Jackass fits. But worse than being a collective jackass Facebook seems to be a digital gangster say some British Parliamentarians.


News and Editorial by Micheal John | Editor (Note: links are source references)


Recent Grievances against Facebook (links are sources)

  • Facebook told advertisers it can identify teens feeling ‘insecure’ and ‘worthless’, reports The Guardian.
  • The Indian Parliament summons Facebook officials over rampant ‘Fake News’ and privacy concerns.
  • After reading a 108-page parliamentary report in Great Britain, some parliamentarians have called Facebook a “Digital Gangster”. Read the report
  • Facebook lies to advertisers about its audience claims and is defrauding advertisers who use the site as an advertising medium.
  • Facebook has been randomly censoring content it feels may not suit its corrupted processes for making money by any means.
  • Facebook is being sued for claiming audiences greater than populations. Read court file: Facebook_ads_Lawsuit
  • Facebook will track and collect data from unwitting customers in order to increase advertising revenue, according to a cache of confidential internal emails that were leaked online. Source: RT

Here’s a big one. Facebook censors certain reporters thus joining an international trend, encouraging ill-will toward journos.

Maffick Media on FB has been shutdown by Facebook.  End of free speech exclaims RT. Maffick had at least three amazing pages chock full of documentary video content much of which was top flight reporter’s material.

2 Billion ( ÷4 ?) membership Facebook launches full censorship campaign against journalists it thinks are "enemies of the American people". 2 Billion ( ÷4 ?) membership Facebook launches full censorship campaign against journalists it thinks are “enemies of the American people”. Photo Credit” Melissa Hemingway, Feminine Perspective Magazine, Art: Rosa Yamamoto

The Maffick Media company, RT, Sputnik each employ some great editors and some very good reporters. Their articles range the entire gambit of news coverage. They also employ entertainers like you see on Fox News. They dress in power suits and sit at rigid Cronkite-like desks on Fox News, but on RT media they tend to dress casually and shoot from the hip like late show hosts’ monologues. They annotate opinion and news.

Clearly there is a slant, yes. Pro-Russia is what you get from political commentary on RT and its subsidiaries. It’s like Fox News and CNN except the rah rahs are for a different country. Says Wikipedia writers, “Media bias is the bias or perceived bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. The term “media bias” implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening the standards of journalism, rather than the perspective of an individual journalist or article. The direction and degree of media bias in various countries is widely disputed.”

Read: How Biased are the mediaWashington Post.

But that seems normal for the USA and for Russia and also for China for that matter.

All Sides Media Bias Chart Media Bias Chart Courtesy AllSides Media

Media Bias is common and most often transparent. It’s upfront and expected. And it is the other side of the story in many cases. The discerning news viewer/reader must have that two-sided presentation to make their own call.

Political Bias in Media Has become Normal

Newspapers were always either Democrat or Republican, Conservative or Liberal.

Fox News is virtually at war with Democrats and CNN seems to be at war with Republicans, implies the All Sides Media Bias Chart.

Regardless of why it is that way, viewers truly need both sides of the story. Fox is a conservative broadcaster and CNN tends to be liberal although very many Fox News talking heads like Bill Hemmer, Lou Dobbs, and Tucker Carlson, came from CNN. Is there a certain balance to the bias?

But Facebook’s censorship is outrageous.

Some of these switch-hitters from CNN-to-Fox are now rabid attack dogs for Donald Trump on Fox news.

Both CNN and Fox News live by trade craft standards and extreme journalistic peer pressure and competition. Their editors are bound by rules and belong to editorial counsel groups that tend to be strong watchdogs. But Facebook is not a news media and is consequently ungoverned by any trade regulations.

Facebook has been banning reporters.

Journalist Abby Martin, who hosts “The Empire Files” on TeleSur English, told Sputnik News after TeleSur’s page was temporarily removed from Facebook, “The shuttering of progressive media amidst the ‘fake news’ and Russiagate hysteria is what activists been warning all along — tech companies, working in concert with think tanks stacked with CIA officials and defense contractors, shouldn’t have the power to curate our reality to make those already rendered invisible even more obsolete.” — Sputnik (Alexander Rubinstein.)

The extraordinary thing about this Facebook censorship rationale is that it is complete baffle-gab or in the alternative it is utter stupidity. Facebook’s response to complaints is the most disingenuous claptrap.

Finally Facebook has said that it will permit the resurrection of the multi-million subscriber “pages” of  Maffick Media company if that company publishes something to say whom it is owned by and what country it is slanted toward.  That is nonsensical but Maffick Media company should be inclined to transparency, and doesn’t seem to have qualms about being transparent. It produces great content hence it is an asset to all internet users.

Rachel Blevins, a correspondent for RT America:

Today I was locked out of my Facebook account for four hours, and my public page was “unpublished.” There appears to be no explanation for this other than the vague claim from Facebook that my page was taken down because it was “administered by a fake account, misleading users or violating the Facebook spam policies.” I am the only person who publishes posts on my page; the only posts I publish are articles I have written or videos of my reports, and I only post one or two times a day — which rules out all of the claims that I have violated Facebook’s policies.

My page had nearly 70,000 followers before it was taken down. I have poured the last four years into building my page as a journalist, and I have noticed recently that the reach seems to have been stifled and that the engagement on my posts was down significantly. I know that I am not the only one who has become a victim of this purge, and there are hundreds of other pages — many of which had millions of followers — that have been taken down with no warning and no explanation. Source: Sputnik (Alexander Rubinstein.)


Feminine-Perspective:

Like every person on this planet,  journalists are entitled to their free speech as promised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Read: Universal-declaration-of-human-rights.


OPINION: Facebook threatens the safety of women and children.


This corporate gangster has robbed too many people and is endangering others. This statement is capable of proof or FPM.news would not be making the statement.

Facebook Hypocrisy  of Permitting Pro-Rape Pages and Banning Reporters is an outrage.

Years ago The RINJ Foundation launched an enormous campaign against Facebook’s use of rape content to attract membership after a minor child in Canada was gang-raped by a group of college students who filmed the rape. It took months of strenuous activism, petitions, police complaints and court cases to get Facebook to take down their videos of the rape.

The audience for the rape-videos were colossal. The RINJ Campaign learned this was one case among thousands and the audience for the rape pages was growing at a staggering rate and growing Facebook’s membership also at a staggering rate of millions of views per seamy content item.

Facebook made money from rape pages Circa 2010

During the campaign, Facebook used trolls and business executives to attack The RINJ Foundation’s  executive and online activists. It tried to locate women activists who used pseudonyms. The assaults on some of these women were so vicious, both psychological and physical, at least two women had nervous breakdowns and left the organization. Dozens of others fled without a word. Those who remained were more determined to fight for the safety of women and children. The personal attacks against RINJ were scandalous. But by 4 November  2011, Facebook ruled that its rape pages must show a notice in their rape content headline that they were to be viewed as “Humor” and it created an automated process to insert “(humor)” at the end of the headline of thousands of pro-rape pages.

Eventually RINJ activism forced Facebook to remove its rape pages content by demonstrating to advertisers that it could launch serious boycotts against advertisers who were seen advertising on  rape pages. Some advertisers were shocked at what RINJ showed them says Katie Alsop of The RINJ Foundation.

Boycott of ‘rape culture’ Providers.

RINJ Campaign Says Facebook Pages are used for Sex Trade

Philip Sherwell, The Telegraph With nearly 210,000 people indicating that they “like” it, and many million of monthly visitors, the “alleyway” page is the most popular. Others include “Abducting, raping and violently murdering your friend as a joke”, “Pinning your mate down while someone HIV positive rapes him for a laugh”, “Police call it a restraining order, we call it playing hard to get” and “Turning into a chain smoking sexual predator when you drink”. – The Telegraph  Philip Sherwell – 7:30AM BST 16 Oct 2011

 

As of October 25, 2011 RINJ had convinced many advertisers including Royal Bank, American Express, BlackBerry, Future Shop, ModCloth, Sony and others to withdraw their ads from improper Facebook content. Because Facebook’s advertising algorithms don’t guarantee blacklisting certain pages, the internet giant has removed advertising from many dozens of pages while simultaneously some companies have removed all their advertising and in essence dropped Facebook from their media plan until the issue is cleaned up.

Rape pages (Wikipedia)

A series of pro-rape and ‘rape joke’ content on Facebook drew attention from the media and women’s groups.[268] Rape Is No Joke (RINJ), a group opposing the pages, argued that removing “pro-rape” pages from Facebook and other social media was not a violation of free speech in the context of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the concepts recognized in international human rights law in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.[269] RINJ repeatedly challenged Facebook to remove the rape pages.[270] RINJ then turned to advertisers on Facebook telling them not to let their advertising be posted on Facebook’s ‘rape pages’.[271]

Hence Facebook is indeed a Corporate Gangster and must go. Other Social Media must be regulated.

From some of this corporate giant’s activities there is no coming back.  Censoring reporters is deadly in a democracy. Promoting scurrilous conduct among society is beyond being a sinister “corporate gangster”.

Losing Facebook is no loss. Be honest. This corporate gangster has been mining user’s personal information and selling that as content for hefty fees. It adds no value to society in any manner whatsoever. It provides a venue for the harshest of hatreds and enjoys financial remuneration for the audiences such trash draws.

Facebook appeals to troubled minds both children’s and adult’s. Read: The Guardian’s article: Facebook told advertisers it can identify teens feeling ‘insecure’ and ‘worthless’

Facebook originated as a social media for teenagers who in order to create an account had to prove that they were associated with a school by submitting their school email address.  It was FaceMash in July 2003, but later changed to TheFacebook on February 4, 2004. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommate and fellow Harvard University student Eduardo Saverin. Today teenagers say goodbye to Facebook and hello to messenger apps

Facebook has come a long way from its money-making rape pages. It may have deliberately corrupted an election in the Philippines and one in the United States.