The New American, by C. Mitchell Shaw — January 20, 2020
Excerpt:
From the print edition of The New American:
Today’s Web is far different from the electronic public square it was originally created to be. Yet there is realistic hope the Web can be liberated from the stifling restraints of Big Tech and Big Government.
Last summer, Facebook slapped this magazine’s parent organization, The John Birch Society, with a “hate speech” violation and demonetized the organization’s Facebook page for 30 days. The reason: Our July 8, 2019 print magazine cover, which included a real photograph of immigrants illegally crossing a border fence. That cover article was headlined “Immigrant Invasion” and a caption for that photo inside the magazine included the word “diseases.” Disregarding the accuracy of the photo, the headline, and the caption, Facebook deemed the post “hate speech.”
As a result of the public backlash following this magazine publishing an article about that “hate speech” violation, Facebook backed down. But the fact remains that such actions by Facebook and other social-media giants are not “isolated incidents” — they are par for the course. And while this magazine had the clout to bring pressure to bear on Facebook, individual users who find their posts removed for non-existent violations don’t have that clout. They just have to deal with it.
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View the complete article including image, links and comments at:
https://www.thenewamerican.com/print-magazine/item/34519-freeing-the-web-from-big-tech
