In a letter dated August 26, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta and founder of Facebook, expressed regret to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) for caving in to White House pressure to remove posts and comments that were offensive to the Democratic administration. Zuckerberg acknowledged that he foolishly caved in to political pressure by deleting a tweet that criticized Biden's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He may also have refrained from making other public statements to avoid angering the administration.
But Zuckerberg said such censorship was a mistake, and that going forward, he and his team will not interfere with Facebook content because of ideological preferences or kowtowing to politicians.
Despite Zuckerberg's reassurances to Jim Jordan, it appears the old double standard remains among Zuckerberg's employees.
Zuckerberg appears to be signaling that he plans to distance himself professionally from left-wing Democratic Party activists. Instead, his letter suggests he will align himself with Elon Musk by allowing a wider range of political views on his platform.
But that may not reflect Zuckerberg's true intentions: There is evidence at the Chronicles magazine where I work that Zuckerberg is reverting to his old ways.
On September 2nd, the editor-in-chief of this magazine said,A fighting chance to get back to normalLongtime columnist Tom Piatuk wrote an article titled “Misleading Content.” As is often the case, something unexpected and embarrassing happened: the article was removed and we were reprimanded for attempting to post “misleading content.”
No one would argue that Piatuck's Trump-Vance voting recommendations represent objective science, but they are no more biased than CNN, MSNBC, or network television news commentary. Piatuck expresses his own political opinions and gives reasons why he believes they are valid. He argues that until recently, national candidates who held the views of Trump and Vance were not considered “kooks” or “extremists.” Most Americans probably agreed with them.
Piatuk points out that the anxiety these candidates have generated is evidence of where America's power elites have led the country. At least half of the public — myself included — would agree with Piatuk's views on America's political radicalization, and there is at least some justification for endorsing his view of the modern era.
It's hard to believe that other political statements approved by Zuckerberg's censors are more “objective.” Most of the posts I see on Facebook are partisan opinions or emotional outbursts presented as coherent thoughts. For example, comments on a recent anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstration on an American college campus: deemed acceptable From Facebook.
As the New York Post points out, these posts are often full of anti-Semitic remarks and innuendo. Facebook censors likely didn't remove them because their authors are politically left-leaning. Despite Zuckerberg's assurances to Jim Jordan on August 26, it seems the old double standard still lingers among Zuckerberg's employees.
Fortunately, we at the Chronicles are not dependent on Zuckerberg's operations. We rely heavily on X (formerly Twitter) to distribute our articles, which, unlike Facebook, allows open debate, much to the dismay of the corporate media. We are increasingly moving our articles to its honest website, especially since the Intellectual Takeout, a web publication we have been associated with for a long time, was removed from Facebook for exposing government lies about COVID.
Intellectual Takeout has lost a lot of its Facebook audience due to Zuckerberg's subservient ties to the Democratic Party and his now-admitted decision to censor those who don't toe the White House party line, and after our recent experience with Facebook censorship, we're glad we no longer have to rely so much on this dodgy website to promote our work.
The Chronicles situation has not raised any noticeable concern among the major right-leaning companies, despite our attempts to inform them. We are a small publication compared to National Review, the Wall Street Journal, or our friends here at Blaze Media. Zuckerberg may have chosen to target smaller publications while leaving the big ones alone. But I think there may be a more significant shift taking place. Zuckerberg and his employees appear to be moving away from censoring small conservative magazines to targeting larger, more widely read publications. If they can arbitrarily remove politically objectionable content from smaller outlets, they may extend this practice to major outlets as well.
To counter this potential strategy, we need to highlight Facebook’s censorship before it spreads further.
