Facebook has been criticized in congressional hearings for the practice of “shadowbanning,” allowing conservatives to publish right-wing content, but subtly preventing users from actually seeing it.
Over the past 24 hours, barely any of PragerU’s 3 million followers have been able to view its recently shared videos, including one pro-life presentation hosted by activist Lila Rose as well as videos on other topics by by Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens. Even in this time where big tech is being threatened with prosecution, Silicon Valley leftists can’t seem to restrain themselves from banning high profile conservatives.
Obianuju Ekeocha, a Nigerian pro-life activist made a similar accusations of big tech bias when she found that Facebook censored her article,
I shared an article on Facebook about our African Culture of Life & protection of the unborn. Facebook completely censored it bcos it “goes against FB community standards”.
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The New York Times, in an article denying that Republicans are being “shadowbanned,” featured professor Monica Stephens who defined the practice as:
“Shadow banning is when you are algorithmically being kind of shut down, and that often has to do with, particularly, the content that you are posting,” Ms. Stephens said. “Maybe it doesn’t violate the terms of service, but they make it so other people can’t see that content.”
In August 2018, PragerU had confronted Facebook’s censorius policies before, tweeting
“We’re being heavily censored on @Facebook. Our last 9 posts are reaching 0 of our 3 million followers. At least two videos were deleted last night for ‘hate speech’ including our recent video with @ConservativeMillen,”
Predictably, after public outcry reached a fever pitch, a Facebook spokesman claimed to the Daily Caller that the videos were removed “mistakenly” and restored the content.
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Pro Life Activist Lila Rose has faced similar cases on big tech bias. She appeared on Fox News this past September to call out Twitter’s CEO for banning her organization’s ads on the platform for the past three years. The founder of LiveAction verbally skewered the CEO for “flat out lying” after he claimed that the website doesn’t discriminate based on political viewpoints.
These cases across various big tech platforms are blatantly political, as similar advertisements from opposition like Planned Parenthood have been allowed without issue. Their bad faith behavior as selective publishers while enjoying the liability-free privileges of being a platform protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act may be what finally ends this safe harbor protection as both the left and the right call for legislation.
