Facebook Employees Demand Censorship of Climate Scepticism
Gizmodo has published a series of leaked Facebook documents that it calls “the Facebook Papers”. They reveal that some Facebook employees are unhappy with the tech giant for not censoring “climate change denial”. Reclaim the Net has more.
In late 2021, one document reportedly shows, there were employees who could not understand why Facebook was not defending “the science of the warming planet” with more strict rules, and were critical of their employer for the inefficiency of the rules that did exist.
The documents, that appear to be logs from internal message boards, show one employee finding a “bug” in the censorship machine, despite the fact a part of Facebook’s policies is to “gently nudge” users toward “more authoritative” sources – a condescending way of saying that users should be prevented from seeing content they want, and instead be corralled and directed toward that often arbitrarily picked by the tech giant.
The “bug” consisted in search returning results that did not “nudge users” or employ other forms of manipulation. For example, when searching “climate change,” Facebook at that time simply returned what was the most viewed content on the subject, and it happened to be a video with over 6.5 million views, titled, “Climate Change Panic Is Not Based on Facts!”
Another employee taking part in this particular conversation called this “a big hole.” A big hole in censorship? Good, some might say, but censorship enthusiasts are fuming that climate topics never got nearly as thoroughly censored as Covid – on that front, Facebook shockingly removed as many as 7 million posts in three months of 2020 alone.
Worth reading in full.
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How many Facebook employees?
All of them. Most of them? Only a few?
In a big enough company, you’ll get all sorts of people with all sorts of opinions. Is this a fair representation of the opinions of Facebook employees.
I’m not saying it is or it isn’t, but I’m also wondering if with this sort of article the DS (and Reclaim the Net) is just trying to push my buttons.
I suspect a lot of them – these companies have gone out of their way to hire mindless drones who support ‘the current thing’. There will probably be plenty who disagree but they either quit or keep quite out of fear of repercussions. The system will undoubtedly also be set up to reward the biggest mouths with the most pointless and useless input, as has been the case for at least a decade now. Sow the wind of incompetence, reap the whirlwind of peak stupidity.
Possibly not many, but they might get their way. Vocal minorities often do, and we ignore them at our peril.
In general I don’t think you should underestimate how polarised politically workforces are. Where I work, in IT, almost nobody would admit to voting Conservative or supporting Trump or Le Pen or voting for Brexit. I think some do vote Tory, but not many, and of those even fewer would be pro-Trump. And almost none of them speak about it openly. I think out of 70 I was possibly the only one. Same goes for almost all of my friends, almost all of which are metropolitan, educated liberals working in professional and managerial roles. And when they speak, they just assume you will have the same views as them and start to splutter (or stop contacting you) when they discover you’re a horrid racist/nazi etc.
Well, it’s hard to get the information you are looking for. Facebook, like the U.S. government, is not exactly “transparent” when it comes to releasing important information.
So then the article doesn’t really say anything new. We know FB censors information. One leaked memo confirms what everyone already knows. Great..
There is an intent in the article which I don’t like. It promotes the notion that as a general rule, those working in FB are all a bunch of censorship loving, woke, leftists. Maybe that’s true but we don’t really know and nor does the DS or Reclaim the Net.
And for that matter, nor should FB. It’s none of their business what the political beliefs of their employees are. At least it shouldn’t be.
I really miss the days when a person’s political ideas, sexual preferences and religious beliefs was a private matter and poking one’s nose into it was considered pretty rude. The world was a lot better for it.
It promotes the notion that as a general rule, those working in FB are all a bunch of censorship loving, woke, leftists. Maybe that’s true but we don’t really know and nor does the DS or Reclaim the Net.”
I guess we couldn’t know what percentage of employees fit this profile unless we carefully interviewed all of them, and they all gave honest answers.
For my part, as someone who has been banned by Facebook and was constantly harassed by them for months until I was banned, I tend to think almost all of their employees fit this label.
I do know (or have read) that Facebook employs at least 15,000 “content moderators” around the world. Plus, the people who hired these people, train them and monitor their daily censorship. Then you have all the software people who are tweeking the algorithms.
The few whistleblowers at Facebook I have read of were upset that Facebook wasn’t censoring enough. I’ve still yet to hear of a whistleblower who is outraged at all the censorship the company has already done.
If we attach the FB employees for what they believe, then we are no better than the activists who want to cancel everyone they disagree with.
For me the problem is that Facebook promotes censorships not that some of their employees like it,
There is an intent in the article which I don’t like. It promotes the notion that as a general rule, those working in FB are all a bunch of censorship loving, woke, leftists. Maybe that’s true but we don’t really know and nor does the DS or Reclaim the Net. And for that matter, nor should FB. It’s none of their business what the political beliefs of their employees are. At least it shouldn’t be. In principle, I agree with that. But the situation is a little different here, at least partially: FB employs so-called content moderators who are responsible for upholding the FB community standards by deleting content supposedly violating them and handing out FB punishments to the people who were responsible for sharing/ posting/ writing that. These content moderators act anonymously and authoritatively without any oversight or complaints procedures whatsoever. The usual process is as follows One gets a notification that … violated point … of the FB community standards. No explanation or rationale for that is provided. One may chose to dispute this by clicking on a button. After a while, one gets a second notification that this was rejected. Again, no explanation or rationale. One can… Read more »
I realise that it all seems whimsical. But firstly, I don’t think we really know the extent to which individual moderators have discretion, regardless of how it may seem. The memo in fact refers to how they are bound by guidelines and some people would like to change them which suggests moderators can’t just impose their personal views.
But in any case, the problem is FB and their policies and the pressure that is put on it by shareholders, the state, institutions, whoever, to operate in a particular way.
If we start demanding that the employees of FB adhere to certain ideological positions, then how are we any better to all the rabid woke thought police that are intent on policing our thoughts?
I don’t care what FB employees believe or think, what I care is how FB as an organisation acts. And I doubt very much FB policy on censorship is driven by it’s run of the mill employees.
You’ll find the complete Violence and incitement text here
https://transparency.fb.com/en-gb/policies/community-standards/violence-incitement
Combined with the example I provided above, I consider this a demonstration that FB content moderators don’t give a shit about FB guidelines when making censorship/ punishment decisions, being full well aware their victims have absolutely no redress.
It’s hard to believe so many politicians believe man made Climate Change is real.
They are either really really stupid or evil.
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“arbitrarily picked by the tech giant”… hmm more likely a most definitely thoroughly thought-out pick by the tech giant involving some financial interest of tech giant shareholders who also, oddly enough, have huge stakes in ‘green technology’, just as some tech giant shareholders also, coincidentally, happened to have huge stakes in ‘pharmaceuticals’.
The most frightening thing is that we have complete intellectual pygmies who have managed to convince themselves that having bought a paper certificate after spending hours listening to regurgitated drivel and then themselves regurgitating said drivel in exams is somehow proof of intellectual superiority. Such intellectual superiority, in fact, that there is no need for them to engage in debate with anyone of a different mindset and actually prove their intellectual superiority. Nope, just silence those who disagree. Well, it does look like the future holds power blackouts – that means no internet, no phone that is infinitely smarter than the person holding it. What then? If half of them will be able to find their way home from the corner shop without their phone I’d be amazed. It will be fun to watch.
Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instagram and YouTube could and should have been one of the greatest innovations in world history. Basically, these Internet platforms allowed any person in the world to be a journalist, researcher, fact-checker or opinion-leader. If the mainstream media wasn’t presenting a balanced and fair picture of any topic, millions of people could fill in the gaps and let the public get the “rest of the story” or an alternative point of view. It took a while, but the Powers that Be who really rule us all quickly saw that this development was NOT going to help them accomplish all of their authoritarian agendas. It’s amazing to me how easily they captured and co-opted these social media platforms – potential threats – and made them allies to their cause. The same thing really happened in “public health.” Once upon a time, the family doctor independently made all the health decisions for people. These doctors didn’t take their orders from the CDC, NIH or the American Medical Association. Now 98 percent of them do only what their “guidance” tells them they must do (or, more importantly, what they cannot do). The mainstream press was similarly co-opted and captured. In… Read more »
I have a solution to the worlds problems: We inform all Guardian readers that there’s a free Latte with every self-flagellation or virtue-signalling course they attend. We then dose the Latte with arsenic (or sneak in their 28th vaccine dose) and, hey presto, all of life’s problems disappear.
“self-flagellation or virtue-signalling”
Not really about Guardian readers, but I was reminded of this, which is in “Where I’m From” by Akala. You could probably write something in a similar vein about champagne socialists.
All these rappers on TV talking shit about how much they bust their strap and Yah, Yah, Yah
You do not listen to them, their talking nonsense
They live in big nice houses
They got security, and bodyguards, and people to take care of them
Its an illusion, you understand?
And all the bitches, and the chains and the neck lasses in the video
Its just bollocks man, That’s nobody’s reality
When did the hood become so sweet?
That’s no hood iv ever been in
Understand? The hood I no is miserable
The hood I no everybody’s trying to get out of
So why are all these rappers dying to get back in it? And dying to be rude-boys?
When all the rude-boys are dying to be legitimate
So, Its just nonsense man, just be honest
Just be yourself
More articles attacking Facebook please! Toby’s piece also quantifies that 7 million Covid-skeptical posts were removed by Facebook in just a couple of months in 2020. I wonder how many have been removed by now? I wonder how many Facebook users have had their accounts “suspended” or have now been banned from using this social media platform?
If some journalist (by some miracle) reported this information and Facebook users tried to share these FACTS, Facebook would no doubt ban these people.
But I think this is a moot point because I don’t think there is any mainstream “journalist” who would report this information. So important information quantifying the extent of censorship in the world is … censored.
For what it’s worth, I’m one of the millions of former Facebook users who has been banned from Facebook …. because my Covid posts were deemed to have “violated community standards.” I say I’m “banned,” but this word might need qualifying. I had my account suspended multiple times for different lengths of time with the threat that similar future posts would get me permanently banned. But I was also one of the small (?) percentage of users who was flagged for some kind of “security” measure implemented by Facebook. Because of this, I was told I had to submit all of this extra surveillance information to be cleared/allowed to continue to post. Supposedly this was to protect my account from being “hacked” by nefarious entities. But in reading the fine print on this “safety” program, I learned that this program targeted more influential posters or those who might make posts that could be shared by many of my fellow members. No dummy me, I concluded this was a sneaky way to ban and monitor potential trouble-makers who insisted on challenging the “authorized” narratives. Anyway, this was the final straw for me. I refused to “sign up” and thus I now… Read more »
By the way, get ready to publish many more articles on this subject – which combines two terrifying trends – Censorship and the push for a (Green) New World Order.
This Green Agenda is THE top agenda of our rulers, so to bring this agenda to fruition these organizations are of course going to have to CENSOR far more content and dissenting citizens going forward. The only speech they censor is words that threaten their agendas. That is, there’s a REASON they HAVE to censor certain speech.
Does anyone still use Facebook?
It is a bizarre business model. The corporate leaders of Facebook seem intent on banning or running off 25 percent of their users. (Here I assume that 25 percent of world citizens DO question the faux Covid narratives. Of course, most of these 25 percent probably “self censor.” That is, they know they will be harassed and banned if they post what they really think_.
I also note that ALL the big corporations still advertise heavily on Facebook. This tells me all the mega corporations don’t give a crap about the fact Facebook is censoring people left and right. That is, these companies condone and applaud said censorship. That is, they do NOT believe in “free speech.” … So we have that going for us as a society.
All of these corporations don’t think one second about advertising on Facebook. In contrast, none of them (I assume) will ever advertise at The Daily Skeptic. Talk about your giant “tells.” … Talk about literally putting their money where their real beliefs are …
I overheard a most entertaining and encouraging thing in the staffroom today. A middle aged teaching support worker who I’ve never met was seated at a large table eating lunch with about eight teachers, one of whom is an arch Covidian I’ve had some run-ins with.
Over cheese sandwiches he calmly and decisively dismantled the entire vaccine narrative using the calmest friendliest form of Socratic questioning delivered in a slightly dreary Yorkshire accent. It was genius. In the space of about 20 mins, he’d covered the clinical trial fraud, the record adverse events, the dangers of mRNA technology and the Great Reset, all of which his colleagues knew nothing about. They largely remained silent throughout, occasionally adding how many times they’d had covid since being jabbed. They looked concerned.
Waited for him in the corridor afterwards to give him a high five and introduce myself. He said, “Well, if you don’t tell ‘em, they’ll never know “
One can only hope that staff rooms up and down the country have an equivalent version of him.
This ties into this subject of this thread and post. This man is absolutely right of course. If “you don’t tell people, they’ll never know.” Facebook is working as hard as it can to NOT let people know.
Thanks for sharing this anecdote. Hope lives!
Thanks! It did seem incongruous in hindsight but I appreciate you helping to make it relevant! Hope lives indeed!
And these colleagues who knew nothing were responsible for teaching children?
I was always suspicious of social media, even going way back to My Space. It seems my suspicions were well founded. You lot are lucky I signed up to the Daily Sceptic! 😉
If you don’t want to be subjected to Facebook propaganda/censorship, close your Facebook account. I did it 6 years ago …… and I haven’t missed it one little bit.