Following the success of suppression experiments, the Silicon Valley giant has committed to forcing political content, and current events off Facebook.
In a July 2022 update to information first published in February, 2021, Meta declared that they were ‘reducing the amount of political content people experience in their Feed.’
Powering the embargo, Meta said it will ‘place less emphasis on likes and shares for politics’ related material.
The brief update did not explain what it considers to be political, only that ‘tests have concluded and demonstrated’ that the mechanism ‘is an effective way to reduce’ political commentary on its user’s social media news feeds.
Part of the mechanism includes ranking political content.
Exemptions will include ‘organisations like the WHO, CDC,’ and UN, as well as ‘government agencies and services.’
Last year, CNET clarified Meta’s reasoning behind the shadow-ban-on-steroids manoeuvre, stating that Meta wanted to move away from news and politics, towards more ‘family and friends’ content.
Meta’s new hard-line policing of politics and news could also see a renewed focus on removing accounts, and pages, which distribute information about news, and politics.
Consequently, CNET explained, ‘publishers could see their traffic impacted.’
This helps to explain Meta’s unexplained, suspension of Caldron Pool’s editor Ben Davis from Facebook, and its unchallengeable ban of Caldron Pool from Instagram.
So far, Meta has not issued a guarantee that its Facebook filtering system will be as inclusive and intolerant of both sides of the political divide.
Based solely upon experiences (see here, here, here, here, here, and here) Facebook’s so-called “independent fact-checkers” appear to have been handed a licence to shoot-first, and maybe allow the victim to ask questions later.
Reporting on Meta’s 2021 experiments, the New York Times quipped: ‘after inflaming political discourse around the globe, Facebook is trying to turn down the temperature.’
Defending the delete button, NYT quoted Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, as stating, “One of the top pieces of feedback we’re hearing from our community right now is that people don’t want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services.”
The 2021 NYT piece also said, ‘it’s unclear how Facebook’s algorithm will define political content.’
Criticisms of Facebook’s filtering are not new, as are criticisms of Facebook’s blatant censorship.
Criticizing Meta’s new automated mute and minimize button, House of Representatives Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy spoke to the problem of encouraging ignorance instead of information, noting on Twitter, “Facebook made sure no one saw the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election.”
McCarthy added, “But now that America has record inflation, rising crime, & a border crisis—all as a result of Dem policies—Facebook is shutting down more “political content” to hide the truth from Americans.”
While it’s true Meta’s plans date back to early 2021, McCarthy has a point.
An increasing number of American voters are losing patience with the “Build Back Better” Biden/Harris circus burning down the United States, and they will use the mid-term elections to vent their frustrations.
If unhindered by the Democrat Deus Ex Machina, which saw Biden take a mysterious midnight lead over Trump in 2020, the mid-terms are likely to end decades of Democrat dominance over both the social, and political aspects of life in the United States.
The unravelling of the January 6 “insurrection” show trials, along with the dwindling power of the racism and abortion cards, means the Democrats are not squeezing as much emotional capital out of them as they once did.
This would make any plugged-in career Democrat looking for a win, desperate.
It would be naïve not to suspect that Meta – who has played the fiddle for Congressional Leftists before – has been called in to save the Dems from what looks likely to be a devastating election defeat.
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