Facebook ‘Link-Bans’ Conservative Streaming Site ‘Censored.tv’ Featuring Gavin McInnes

Facebook recently banned links to censored.tv, a conservative streaming site featuring former Fox contributor and Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes.

Facebook first deployed link-banning against InfoWars last May, as a way to censor not only a website, but anyone who links to the website too. Facebook also bans positive mentions of any banned individual it considers “extremist,” unless the posts explicitly condemn the content.

As The Atlantic reported in May:

Infowars is subject to the strictest ban. Facebook and Instagram will remove any content containing Infowars videos, radio segments, or articles (unless the post is explicitly condemning the content), and Facebook will also remove any groups set up to share Infowars content and events promoting any of the banned extremist figures, according to a company spokesperson. (Twitter, YouTube, and Apple have also banned Jones and Infowars.)

Censored.tv featured a wide range of figures who have been banned on social media platforms, including McInnes, Laura Loomer, Milo, and combat veteran Joe Biggs.

McInnes has been previously been banned from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. So too has Laura Loomer, who is a candidate in the Republican congressional primary for Florida’s twenty-first district.

Loomer recently retained FEC lawyer Charlie Spies to file a complaint with the FEC against Twitter. The suit alleges that by preventing her access to the platform, the tech company has made an illegal “in-kind contribution” to her political opponents.

Despite continuing bans against conservatives and right-wingers on his platform, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg insisted just last week that Facebook is “going to stand up for free expression” even though it will “piss off a lot of people.”

The Facebook CEO has also said he won’t ban messages from politicians, even though a number of politicians, including Loomer, remain banned from the platform.

“We think people should be able to hear what politicians have to say,” said the Facebook CEO in October.