Good news! We can use Facebook again! Zuckerberg has announced that the social media platform would be changing how it monitors (that is, censors) content, moving from a biased “independent review” to a community notes system.

Conservatives shouted, “that’s great!”

Liberals wailed, “what are you doing, traitor!?”

I’m calling, “bullshit”.

Zuckerberg is playing the right-side of the field, trying to be a Jewish Elon Musk. Meta’s board, who ostensibly disagrees with him and is hoping to reel him in, is playing the left-side. It’s obvious what they are doing: playing both sides against the middle to increase market share while trying to deflect the heat they are starting to get from their cozy relationship with the Biden administration and their willing assistance in all things censorship.

I have not used Facebook in seven years. I know many others who don’t as well. I stopped voluntarily, deciding it was silly to send my personal information to a Jewish billionaire so he could make more money, and resenting how I increasingly felt like I needed to walk on egg-shells when posting so as not to offend their communist “fact-checkers”.

I know others who were booted from the platform for sharing opinions or offering information which ran contrary to the Liberal Narrative®, especially during the “Covid Era”. One example pops to mind of a compatriot who had the audacity to point out that Blacks, as a percentage of the population, are convicted of more violent crimes than Whites. This is a simple fact. It can, and should be, part of a larger discussion—why Blacks commit more crimes, methods of data collection, systemic or social factors and so on—but instead, simply posting that fact got him suspended from Facebook for a month.

Other examples of Facebook censorship include:

• In Germany and Britain, Facebook actively censors anti-immigrant speech;
• Facebook has worked with the Pakistani government to censor “blasphemous” pages and speech inside Pakistan;
• Facebook has often censored posts critical of the anthropomorphic climate change theory;
• In May 2016, Facebook was accused by a former employee of leaving out conservative topics from the trending bar;
• An open letter by peer-reviewed medical journal BMJ to Zuckerberg, critical of the phase III evaluation trails of the Pfizer Covid vaccine, was labeled as misinformation and users were warned not to post it;
• Posts critical of Facebook itself are often banned;
• Facebook has repeatedly sided with Israel in their Gaza land-grab, banning posts deemed critical of Israel, its government, or their actions, or that are perceived as pro-Palestinian;

Indeed, Facebook itself brags about how many posts they remove, stating “[In] December 2024, we removed millions of pieces of content every day.”

It wasn’t always like this. In the “old days” (meaning before about 2003), if a person wanted to share their ideas or point of view with the general public, they submitted an opinion piece to the local paper, spoke at a community gathering, or, if they were really motivated, wrote a book. If it was something of immediate relevance, they might stand on the street corner and shout their message to passers-by or hand out leaflets. And, of course, they talked to their friends, oftentimes in person— I know, weird, right?

With the exception of the editor at the newspaper deciding whether or not to publish an opinion piece, the processes of information dissemination was essentially self-correcting: if people disagreed with your position, or thought you were misinformed, they simply wouldn’t listen or buy your book, or they might offer a counter argument using the same platforms. Or your friend might tell you he or she thought you were full of …

Then along came so-called “social media”. Small versions of what we now consider social media existed even before the internet became popular, but it started to go mainstream in 2003 when Blogger and Myspace hit the scene, and in 2004 with the start of Facebook.

Originally, Facebook was targeted at college students and Myspace was king-of-the-hill. At one point, January of 2007, Myspace was signing up 320,000 users a day, and had overtaken Yahoo! to become the most visited website in the United States and by mid-2007 was the largest social networking site in Europe as well.

But by the end of 2007, for a variety of reasons, Facebook was gaining ground, and by mid-2008 it had overtaken Myspace as the top social media site on the internet. It still is by a large margin: according to the Pew Research Center, Facebook (now Meta) has 1.7 Billion users, including 69% of all the adults in the United States.

Suddenly, and increasingly, people could give voice to what they wanted to say to an ever-increasing number of people. Oh the humanity!

But what happens if you own Facebook and don’t like what people are saying? Or you own the world’s largest social media service and someone from the federal government calls and tells you they don’t like what people are posting on your platform?

Well, if you’re a true believer in the 1^st Amendment and generally comfortable in your own skin (that is to say, not Jewish), you let people go about their business as long as they aren’t breaking any laws. If you’ve got any balls, you tell the government, “thanks for the phone call, but go pound sand.”

But of course, we’re talking about Mark Zuckerberg.

In the last few years, a mix of House investigations and litigation has forced more of the censorship system under the Biden Administration into public view… showing years of false statements about the extent of this government-corporate alliance across social media platforms…While Zuckerberg portrayed Meta as an unwilling partner in this censorship system … he and the company ignored many years of objections … regarding the critical role the company plays in targeting and censoring opposing viewpoints. – J. Turley

Zuckerberg wasn’t alone in caving to the leftist mob – or the Obama/Biden administration – in actively banning opinions or stories that didn’t fit their narrative. Check the terms of service for any social media platform now, and you’ll see severe limits placed on what information you can share, and the extreme measures they will take to block so-called “misinformation”.

Even most center-ish news outlets, and all leftist organizations, stopped allowing user comments on their stories years ago. Remember when we use to be able to read an article, then respond to it by leaving a comment, saying something like, “Although I think your article is well written, I disagree with the overall premise because of a few key points. For example….”? They got tired of not being able to consistently enforce The Narrative® by telling only one side of the story, so out went the comment section.

Then, of course, Musk saved the internet by purchasing Twitter. Or so I’ve been told.

Now, Zuckerberg wants to do be seen in the same light as Trump’s bagman Elon Musk (or is that Elon’s bagman Donald Trump. To be determined I guess.)

I call it being “purple-pilled”. He wants to be red and blue at the same time. On the one hand, he’s giving a $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and says he’s going to loosen the censorship strings on Facebook by switching from independent “fact-checkers” (that is, biased reviewers) to a Twitter-type community review.

On the other hand, and here’s the thing, it is not, nor has it ever been, about fact-checking.

It’s opinion checking and outright censorship of narratives the platform doesn’t like. Meta says they are replacing “fact checkers” with a user-based system. The intent is to appear they are being more open, not censoring ideas or information, and generally promoting free speech. What most people in the media seem to miss (I’m sure it’s by accident) is that even a “community notes” version of speech policing requires guidelines to judge the speech in question against. It’s called Terms of Service.

Spoiler: he’s not changing anything!

I spent most of a night reading the new Terms of Use, Privacy Statement (short version, you really don’t have any), and Community Standards for Facebook, which were updated January 1, 2025, so you don’t have to. Aren’t I a great guy?

Let me share what I found (I’ll fact-check myself before I post this: I own the website):

First, the basics and their overall approach: You may not use Meta services to share or do anything “That is unlawful, misleading, discriminatory or fraudulent (or assists someone else in using our Products in such a way)…We work with independent fact-checkers in many jurisdictions to combat misinformation. When content has been rated by fact-checkers, we may add a notice to provide additional context.”

Wait, I thought they were doing away with “fact-checkers”. It turns out that going from “independent fact-checker” to “community notes” requires time and will be gradually rolled out. “Community notes” moderators have to apply for the role and be approved. We’ll see how that goes.

They go on to inform you that they can use whatever you post: “Permission to use content that you create and share: Specifically, when you share, post or upload content … you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free and worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate and create derivative works of your content…”

With that groundwork established—they’re going to review what you post, and might use some of it themselves—they go on to what is not allowed. Some of it makes sense, where they prohibit content “coordinating, threatening, [or] supporting” crimes against others, animals, property and, oddly, buying or sharing votes.

But it starts to get interesting when they move on to “Dangerous Organizations and Individuals”. This they break into two Tiers (1 and 2).

Tier 1 are organizations that “engage in serious off-line harm”, which include “Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficking Kingpins (SDNTKs); and terrorist organizations, including … Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) or Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs)”. While some of it, again, makes sense (not allowing internationally recognized drug-kingpins to use or be promoted by the platform) we start to get into the catchall vagueness that lends itself to outright censorship.

For example, it says the Tier 1 designation also applies to entities that engage in “repeatedly dehumanizing … people based on protected characteristics [meaning Alphabet People, Jews, etc]”. No definition of what “dehumanizing” is. So it’s possible that if I say that members of the Israeli Defense Force are acting like rabid dogs, that would be a Tier 1 violation of the community standards.

In addition, it goes on to say “…we do not allow content that glorifies, supports, or represents events that Meta designates as violating violent events – including terrorist attacks, hate events, multiple-victim violence or attempted multiple-victim violence, serial murders, or hate crimes.” Praising the bravery of the Waffen-SS, which even their contemporary opponents often did, could be a Tier 1 violation, putting me in the same category as a Foreign Terrorists.

Tier 2 are entities that have not yet engaged in violence, but could, and those that “repeatedly engage in violations of our Hate Speech … policies on or off the platform.”

Interestingly, they mention Hitler by name when they give an example of speech that they consider “glorification” and which would be removed:

Legitimizing or defending the violent or hateful acts of a designated entity by claiming that those acts have a moral, political, logical or other justification that makes them acceptable or reasonable.

E.g. “Hitler did nothing wrong.”

So much for discussing his repudiation of the Treaty of Versailles, the recovery of the Rhineland from France, or the occupation of the Sudetenland to protect the German-speaking minority there.

Bonus! They even mention the American Nazi Party when they give an example of prohibited “representation”:

Creating a Page, Profile, Event, Group, or other Facebook entity that is or purports to be owned by a Designated Entity or run on their behalf, or is or purports to be a designated event.

• E.g., A Page named “American Nazi Party.”

They get us again with “Types and Tiers of Dangerous Organizations” stating:

“While our designations of organizations and individuals focus on behavior, we also recognize that there are certain ideologies and beliefs that are inherently tied to violence and attempts to organize people around calls for violence or exclusion of others based on their protected characteristics. In these cases, we designate the ideology itself and remove content that supports this ideology from our platform. These ideologies include:

• Nazism
• White Supremacy
• White Nationalism
• White Separatism
  We remove explicit Glorification, Support, and Representation of these ideologies, and remove individuals and organizations that ascribe to one or more of these hateful ideologies.”

Another section serves to clarify exactly what they are banning: anything that dares to impugn a protected class “on the basis of what we call protected characteristics (PCs): race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, and serious disease. Additionally, we consider age a protected characteristic when referenced along with another protected characteristic. We also protect refugees, migrants, immigrants, and asylum seekers…”

Then it just gets fun: “We also remove harmful stereotypes.. serious insults, expressions of contempt or disgust, cursing, and calls for exclusion or segregation when targeting people based on protected characteristics.”

So no expressions of disgust when your elementary school library is invaded by hairy-legged drag queens please.

Some of what they ban is oddly, even entertainingly, specific: “Dehumanizing speech in the form of comparisons to or generalizations about animals, pathogens, or other sub-human life forms … including but not limited to insects…Animals in general or specific types of animals that are culturally perceived as inferior (including but not limited to: Black people and apes or ape-like creatures; Jewish people and rats; Muslim people and pigs; Mexican people and worms… [and] Muslim people having sex with goats or pigs …)”. [Editorial note: yes, it really says that.]

And, of course, also banned are stereotypes and anything calling into question accepted narratives, even if they are demonstrably true: Thou shall not post “Harmful stereotypes historically linked to intimidation or violence, such as Blackface; Holocaust denial; claims that Jewish people control financial, political, or media institutions… and comparing Black people to farm equipment.”

I must confess I’m not familiar with the “Black people as farm equipment” example. Maybe it has something to do with picking cotton. But the ban on “claims that Jewish people control financial, political, or media institutions” is interesting given that the person who owns the most voting shares of Meta (Zuckerberg) is Jewish, and the second-largest institutional shareholder is Jewish controlled BlackRock.

It’s been a challenging time to be a voice in the wilderness: as people have generally and almost totally migrated away from the more traditional means of information sharing to digital platforms, those same digital platforms have become increasingly biased gate-keepers of what can and cannot be shared. They do this in a number of ways:

1) Outright account suspension on social media platforms;

2) Online payment platforms refusing to process payments;

3) Not allowing comments or feedback on articles or news stories

In short, the gatekeepers of information-sharing refuse to allow discussion of topics deemed problematic or that might lend themselves to multiple points of view and facts not consistent with a single narrative, e.g.; Covid-19 origin, vaccine side-effects and efficacy, the so-called “January 6” riot, anything critical of the Ukraine War, anything critical of Israel, and rebuttals of anything labeled as “mis-information”.

Facebook is a publicly funded private company. They have every right to do what they want and to run their business in a manner that they believe will best serve their shareholders.

What I resent is their coy dishonesty.

By pretending to be content-neutral, they lead many to believe that what they read or see on their platform represents “the truth” or the whole story. It’s not. Remember, 69% of adults in this country use Facebook, and while I’m sure it’s not the sole source of information for some of them, I would be willing to bet that for many, what they see on Facebook goes a long way toward helping to form their opinions and shaping their ideas.

Facebook (and other social media platforms, as well as information oriented websites like Wikipedia and search engines like Google), need to be honest and acknowledge that they censor information and ideas they do not like, that they always have, and will continue to do so.

A simple banner at the top of each page stating: “Warning: the content on this page is censored and represents, at best, one side of any story or issue. To view other ideas or opinions, please look elsewhere.” would go a long way to improving the dialog in this country, and the world.

Amerika Erwache!

Subscribe