Facebook has repeatedly punished a fast-growing news website for its conservative views on immigration and other topics–suspending its moderators, censoring content, and threatening to close the site down.
Voiceofeurope.com, which takes pride in its “uncensored news,” has been effectively bludgeoned into submission by Facebook and recently announced it will self-censor on the social media site to avoid losing its page.
According to Facebook statistics, Voiceofeurope.com was growing at the rate of about 30,000 new followers every month, with some days registering as many as 5,000 new followers.
As examples of some of the “offensive” postings that incurred the wrath of the guardians of the Facebook galaxy, Voiceofeurope.com dared exhibit a photo of Poles protesting behind a banner with “Mohammed not welcome.” Despite the fact that the photo was undoctored and the news 100 percent accurate, Facebook forced the site to remove the content and suspended one of the site’s moderators for 24 hours.
Voiceofeurope.com also posted a book review of former Czech President Václav Klaus, who compared the influx of migrants to “the barbarian invasions of Europe.” The review was highly critical of uncontrolled immigration, and for this, Facebook punished Voiceofeurope.com by removing the article, suspending a moderator for 30 days, and threatening to shut the site down permanently:
As Voiceofeurope.com noted, Russia Today (RT) posted a similar article on Facebook with no punitive repercussions, presumably because such a move would have created a media scandal.
In September 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was caught on an open mike asking Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to help suppress “anti-immigration” postings on the social media site, to which Zuckerberg replied that he was already working on it.
Not long afterward, Facebook launched its “Initiative for civil courage online,” with the stated goal of removing “hate speech” from Facebook, particularly by targeting comments that “promote xenophobia.”
At the time of the launch, Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, explained that “hate speech has no place in our society — not even on the internet.”
As Breitbart News reported Sunday, last week, Facebook announced its decision to censor the site of YouTube phenomenon Diamond and Silk, an extraordinarily popular duet of young women who are vocal Trump supporters.
According to reports, Facebook first began limiting page notifications to reduce the reach of the site. Then, on Thursday, April 5, Facebook sent a message to the site owners, stating: “The Policy team has come to the conclusion that your content and your brand has been determined unsafe to the community.”
Diamond and Silk have been corresponding with Facebook “about their bias, censorship and discrimination against D&S brand page” since September 7, 2017, according to a post on the duo’s page.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome
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