Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook is actively censoring criticism of Vice President Kamala Harris’s CNN interview in the key battleground of Wisconsin just 66 days before the presidential election.
That’s despite the fact that Zuckerberg admitted that the Biden-Harris administration and FBI pressured Meta (Facebook) to censor posts and expressed regret over how Facebook handled such censorship. Why is he saying one thing to Congress while his platform does another?
What Facebook did: In the hours after Harris’s widely-panned interview, the platform has repeatedly removed posts of our critical analysis piece, which criticized Harris’s performance. The headline on the removed piece – a rather tame column which has been inexplicably given the New York Post-Hunter Biden laptop treatment by Facebook – reads,
Yes, Kamala Harris’s CNN Interview Was a Total Train Wreck [VIDEO]
Facebook notified us that the story violated its community standards on “spam” and removed it. Multiple readers told us they tried to share the column also, and Facebook removed their posts too. Facebook also removed a post of the story link in a comment thread, saying falsely that the post was “misleading.” Put together, it amounts to an aggressive assault on this piece of opinion that was critical of Harris’s performance.
Looks like Zuckerberg is still in the campaign interference business https://t.co/zw3Jq6miIQ
— Derrick Van Orden (@derrickvanorden) August 30, 2024
This isn’t the first time. Facebook also removed a story we wrote on a CNN poll that showed Trump was leading, including with women. Don’t believe us. Read the crosstabs for yourself.
Facebook similarly removed a factual news story we wrote about Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde (who now trails by just 1.2 percentage points) being barred from walking in a Waukesha parade. And Facebook removed a factual news story we wrote about a common-sense election integrity plan put into place by the Washington County, Wisconsin, elected county executive and clerk.
Facebook has also recently censored our accurate news reporting on Eric Hovde and on a new plan proposed by Washington County officials in #Wisconsin. They are actively interfering in Wisconsin elections. pic.twitter.com/BPBcmT4VJQ
— Wisconsin Right Now (@wisconsin_now) August 30, 2024
This is election interference. Why are Facebook and its CEO Zuckerberg trying to prevent Wisconsin voters from reading criticism of Harris at such a crucial time? We learned from the Twitter files that this kind of thing hasn’t always been a “glitch” in the past. Turns out real people with biases were pulling the levers behind the scenes.
Wisconsin Right Now is Wisconsin’s most-read conservative news site. We run news and opinion/analysis pieces. In fact, we’re one of the ONLY conservative news sites in Wisconsin. We have won multiple gold Milwaukee Press Club awards for our journalism, including the best investigative, public service, and news reporting in the state. Furthermore, Wisconsin is a critical battleground state where every vote could matter; Trump was leading by 1 percent in a poll by Emerson/The Hill right before Dana Bash interviewed Harris. Furthermore, we have very large reach on Facebook (a million reach on Facebook in some recent 28-day periods), so preventing us from sharing our criticism of Harris’s interview performance is election interference and could actually matter.
Readers told us the same thing has occurred when they tried to share other sites’ stories critical of Harris this election season, citing articles by the Daily Mail and New York Daily News. Meta has targeted other leading Wisconsin conservative voices in the lead-up to the 2024 election, too, deleting the entire page of talk radio host Vicki McKenna this summer before later restoring it.
This is true. I just posted this on FB and it was instantly blocked. But the reason given made no sense. https://t.co/bZCQQncCsD
— joe handrick (@joeminocqua) August 30, 2024
None of this is acceptable. Congress, please do not let Zuckerberg talk out of both sides of his mouth – claiming he’s fixing the problem while his site is still censoring conservatives in real-time, in a battleground state no less!
This has been happening to Wisconsin Right Now since we started in late August 2020. For example, Facebook also removed a legal analysis we wrote on Kyle Rittenhouse’s gun ownership. It merely analyzed flaws in Wisconsin’s laws that were outlined in court. The judge a few days later dismissed the gun charge using the same analysis. Facebook stripped Rittenhouse of the presumption of innocence and deleted our story saying that we had shared information about a dangerous person or group. Rittenhouse was, of course, later acquitted. Facebook penalized us for sharing this fact-based analysis by dialing back our page’s reach and temporarily banning us from streaming live video.
Our page was once deleted by Facebook because we wrote about the iconic 9/11 Falling Man story by Esquire! It was restored after we appealed, and a U.S. senator raised a hue and cry.
They are interfering with our ability to build a business. As to the argument that, well, they are a private company. They’re increasingly controlling the public square.
Who is the threat to democracy, really?
It’s extremely damaging to American democracy to have the free flow of information increasingly controlled by a few unaccountable and censorious tech barons. Not counting Elon Musk in that because he has courageously tried to create a free speech zone on X. Many liberals, who were all in on the fairness doctrine, don’t seem to care at all when conservative speech is censored (with the exception of some courageous voices like RFK Jr. and Nicole Shanahan). Even Kamala Harris has been historically all in on that. Because it’s Trump.
Try googling Trump or Harris, and you get a plethora of corporate liberal-leading sites. Independent voices are effectively silenced.
Mr. Zuckerberg, please stop preventing Wisconsin readers from learning how poorly Kamala Harris did.
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