Facebook Censors the Left

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Cancel culture, PC culture, woke culture, or whatever stupid name we assign to it, may have been well meaning in the beginning. But like any movement, it's been hijacked and corrupted by power. You can gather the masses with lofty words of equality and fairness; however in the end, those who pull the strings will prevert the original good intentions of the movement for their own gain.

.... Most mainstream media don't publish left viewpoints, and a few do nothing but that.

The problem is that facebook is not perceived as a publisher, even though it takes on a curatorial role. That's a huge problem, because either it's a platform (no censorship) or a publisher (free to censor/publish only what it wants BUT LIABLE for what it publishes).

Right now it's censoring, but not liable. That's relatively new to the media landscape and lawmakers are just too old to understand the whole thing...

I just checked an article that said that the Facebook group was restored and the removal was blamed on an automation error, which are things that happen, a lot of Left political groups have had to face that sort of stuff because they often deal in topics that the wrong side of can be inflammatory.

Jimmy Dore though, he has been losing it, he just recently went onto Tucker Carlson and platformed a Boogaloo Boy, in both instances sort of whitewashing the sort of disinformation they put out, and has been criticising progressive people like AOC, claiming that he made her political career and should decide what she should do. The interview with the Boogaloo Boy did not have him in the least challenging his views but try to make the organisation as palatable as possible and explain problems as a few bad apples.

As of late Jimmy Dore seems to have been the centre of Left-wing infighting, he is more vicious to other people on the Left to anyone who supposedly has opposing opinions to him. And I think that he is kind of finding himself closer to conspiracy theorists.

This is completely wrong.

There is no such platform/publisher distinction.

Publishers are not only allowed to censor without gaining liability, they explicitly HAVE to censor to keep their lack of liability - but they can do it after the fact.

The lawmakers who created the current regulatory environment understood that and did it deliberately, because the alternative was a much slower internet with pre-moderation.

It is the current lawmakers and people calling for a change in the legislation who do not understand the law.

See e.g. https://www.theverge.com/21273768/secti ... moderation

One week they censor the left, one week they censor the right. I think Facebook is confused.

From my "censor" function as a moderator:
When two members of different political alignment fight and you intervene, you get accusations of being biased from both - obviously, both accuse you of being biased against them.

So, while I'm far from liking facebook, I expect them to experience the same - moderating unacceptable behaviors from people with strong political opinions gets interpreted as censoring their side.

Being censored is never a pleasant experience, especially when the censors seem to act in an arbitrary manner or show more leniency toward one group than to another; but what can a person do?

The censors have all the power, and the only recourse for the censored is to either try to conform to the censors' ever-changing set of standards or choose to stop participating in social discourse altogether (which may be the censors' true goal all along -- conform or get lost).

No one mentioned this ... I think they got censored for their COVID posts.

The article says they disagreed with PM Boris Johnson's COVID policies.

Likely, Facebook deemed their COVID posts as scientifically untrue.

Facebook doubles down on COVID-19 censorship
https://telecoms.com/503783/facebook-do ... ensorship/

My view on what's going on on f-book:
Biden is quite openly unfavoring Facebook and its role in spreading conspiracies:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55762104

So, I believe, Facebook is preparing for possible repealing of Section 230 and making them pay for harmful effects of conspiracies - by censoring possible conspiracies before they get out of hand.

So they are as expected acting out of personal/selfish reasons under aspects of capitalism, and not out of some kind of ideological just shutting down speech they don't agree with?

I pretty much believe this is the case.

By the way, I find it fundamentally unfair of f-book that they claim all rights to content published by their users but no responsibility for it.

Everybody acts out of personal/selfish interests -- altruism is a myth.

That would require broader concepts of "self" - you can act "selfish" for your family, community, nation, the planet, etc. - things you feel part of.

Protect the Family, and the Family will protect you (supposedly).  The same idea applies to community, nation, environment, and so on.  Even if all you experience is blessed silence after the baby stops crying, you did what you had to comfort that baby for your own peace of mind.

Well, anyway, my general rule of thumb is: if a phenomenon can be explained by people acting selfish and/or careless, there's usually no need to seek more sophisticated motives.

Latest casualties (fixed by public outcry) - Jim Rutt and a couple other GameB admins: