Censorship of Conservative Content by Liberal Biased Social Media & Email Providers - a Factsheet
This page lists facts, articles, action recommendations, links and sources related to the problem of social media and email providers censoring, blacklisting or shadowbanning conservative news posters. This blog posts conservative information and commentary here, on Facebook and sometimes on YouTube, and in emails to subscribers.
This page was created July 7, 2019, and is growing as we add stuff, so book mark it and return. Submit other examples in the comments section.
The SHORT link to this page is: https://tinyurl.com/CensorshipBySocialMedia
We personally have encountered various types of social media, website and email censorship.
- Facebook censorship and Jail: We have not been put in Facebook Jail, but know local friends and national posters who have been hurt by it and lost all their followers.
- YouTube Censorship: We have seen major conservative YouTube accounts like PragerU lose ability to show many of their conservative videos.
- Email censorship, rejections and blacklisting: Our emails to local FiscalRangers.com blog subscribers via Comcast or Outlook personal email have been screened, filtered, rejected or never delivered by Embarqmail, Earthlink, AOL or CenturyLink because they use screening filter files from 3rd parties that contain our name, IP or blog URL. The filters were most likely based upon content we post related to dangers of Islam.
- Wordpress.com Conservative Websites Shut Down: Four conservative websites using Wordpress.com have been turned off by their parent company, Automaticc in March - June, 2019. Details are below.
Types of censorship, blacklisting and similar action can be categorized as follows:
Social Media Censorship: Primary implementers of conservative censorship include Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram. Most well known is Facebook Jail, which can ban a person's account for a few days, weeks or months. Another insidious technique is to "Shadowban" an account, which means your post is allowed, but it does not show up in the newsfeed or in members' newsfeeds. You never know it was not distributed to anyone and no one sees it. An indicator of that is if you publish a personal picture or animal posts, maybe 15 people might like it, but if you distribute a link about Muslims throwing gays off buildings, no one sees it. Facebook and YouTube also may be doing this with an algorithm that reduces ranking in search engines on topics considered "Hate speech" which could be a pro-Trump video. Google search could use the same technique to prevent items showing in search rankings.
Website hosters or software providers like Wordpress.com that shut down conservative websites for vague reasons. We personally know of four conservative websites using Wordpress.com that have been arbitrarily shut down without notice by Wordpress.com mostly for being critics of Islam, illegal immigration or refugees. Thus any website host, regardless of software used, could also shut down a website.
Email Provider Censorship or Blacklisting by large telecommunications firms: Added censorship is implemented by internet, phone and email providers like Embarqmail, CenturyLink, Earthlink, and AOL that use filters to screen, reject or halt distribution of email based on the content, the sender name or even their IP address. The provider may have their own rejection criteria lists, but add others from third parties which may have questionable motives. Examples are emails sent to subscribers of small blogs by authors on topics that internal or 3rd party blacklists want to censor, and your email "disappears" without notice, or you get a rejection notice with no easy ability to fix the problem or challenge the decision. This happens frequently in the US to bloggers posting criticisms or FACTS about Islam. FiscalRangers.com has had subscriber emails shut off completely to users of the above providers. We were able to get email distribution restored by Earthlink and AOL, but not the other two. AND, only some sent rejection notices to the sender ([email protected]) . Other emails just "disappeared". Since I use the same IP address and computer for personal email. those are also rejected. Thus I have conservative friends who never receive my blog or personal emails.
Email Screening Lists used by large organizations may contain blacklists of conservatives with or without their knowledge. For instance school districts or college student or alumni email domains may use email systems or software that legitimately filter some emails to students, but also censor emails sent to School Board members, Senior staff, and administrators. Thus if citizens want to file a complaint about liberal bias in textbooks, do the emails get through or get screened out based upon word searches? If the Board is discussing formation of gay rights student groups, are complaints sent to the Board or staff blacklisted due to the email using terms like gay, LGBTQ or Muslim filters? A way around this is to require such systems to ALWAYS send a notice back to the sender about a rejected email with contacts to appeal the automated censorship.
Search Engines like Google could exclude your posts or reduce ranking and "discoverability" of your conservative posts in search results. Since Google also owns YouTube and Instagram, that practice affects users of those services also. If you post a page on the internet, even with tags or keywords, Google could reduce showing it in search results if they don't like the conservative topic. An example is searching on Trump might result in only finding negative articles about him.
Deletion or Limitations of Subscriber Growth is another method of censorship: This is practiced by YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. They cap limits on subscribers. Twitter is notorious for removing subscribers without notice.
Fact Checker Bias: Fact Checker applications like well known Snopes or Politifact could have a political or liberal bias and not challenge questionable liberal "facts". If you look at this search on "Fact Checkers" you will see many liberal media show up, thus they control the "fact checker" field and provide a liberal bias to their fact interpretations. https://www.google.com/search?q=fact+checkers .
- Read this article: https://www.newsbusters.org/fact-checkers.
- Media Research Center is a recommended monitor for media with a liberal bias: https://www.mrc.org/
Censorship & Blacklisting based upon "Hate Group" lists such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
This is practiced mostly by liberal social media firms and even newspapers who use an anti-conservative "hate group" list from Southern Poverty Law Center to screen out and censor websites and articles. They are widely known for NOT listing Muslim groups like CAIR, etc. but listing those groups and people critical of Islam.
If you search on the SPLC name, the first 20 or so items are all liberal news sources claiming their list is authentic (a clear bias in search rankings). You finally find a conservative search hit describing the bias in the list such as at the Family Research Council website: https://www.frc.org/splc
"...over time the SPLC has morphed into a bitterly partisan actor that tries to play the role of political referee while simultaneously engaging in progressive activism. It does this by using smear tactics, intimidation, ritualized defamation, and a knack for fundraising to silence its political opponents. " They have a foundation fund exceeding $400-million.
Censorship is also caused by pressure from religious (Islam) or Country groups who demand censorship in return for access to their markets. Thus a background reason for censoring criticisms of Islam or China may be also commercial in nature (not just political) as a means to be allowed access, with censorship, into international markets.
Specific Examples of Censorship, blacklisting, shadowbanning, search exclusion
Google and parent company Alphabet, Plus they own YouTube
Google can practice different types of censorship:
- Not accepting or limiting "objectionable" ads, including those from political groups.
- Changing search ranking of topics or pages so they don't show up in searches.
- You cannot find videos of Muslims throwing gays off roofs but they exist.
- Articles criticizing Democrats, Muslims, global warming, etc. may not get search rankings
- Google search is used to rank YouTube videos so they can be found by searchers, or seeing the "most relevant" videos in the right YouTube column. Altering search results via bias reduces ability for people to find or "discover" certain videos or topics.
Here is the Wikipedia section on "Censorship by Google"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google
Alphabet is the parent company of Google. They also own many other companies, and we would assume their liberal censorship methods affect all of them. Here is a list of all their acquisitions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet
Facebook and subsidiary Instagram Censorship
Twitter censorship
Yahoo censorship
References & Articles:
A 2015 article that describes early non-political social media censorship.
"One issue that EFF and Visualizing Impact hope to highlight is the often unfair nature of community moderation. In many cases groups of users or even government officials have used social media reporting to anonymously censor content they simply don’t agree with. In fact, the idea for OnlineCensorship.org was conceived after EFF’s Jillian York and Visualizing Impact CEO Ramzi Jaber noted that posts advocating for Palestinian statehood often disappear after being reported as “abusive,” particularly on Facebook. " http://cbldf.org/2015/12/new-project-aims-to-map-social-media-censorship/
2017 Article and maps showing types of internet censorship by COUNTRIES around the world.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/internet-censorship-map/
Conclusion:
- Censorship of conservative groups, websites and social media accounts is a "vast liberal conspiracy" with overtones of censoring any criticism (even factual) of Islam. Companies practicing such censorship, just like liberal news media, need to be investigated and perhaps nationalized. The ideal of "free speech" is disappearing with liberals controlling most media sources. National media above certain subscriber or user levels should be required to follow a code of limited or no censorship with users being allowed to self censor what they read.
- Censorship due to pressure from international interests needs to be addressed, possibly by a Federal investigation requiring a split between markets, with separate providers for each. Right now, most social media users cannot restrict access to their accounts by country, thus terrorists or Muslim grooming practitioners can connect with naive US account holders and convert them. Users should be able to choose a restricted market such as "US Only (especially for minors under 18)", western countries, and international. Then political or religious restrictions based upon Islam bias, etc. can be prohibited in the US (or available as a user option - not default). US citizens should be able to specify they want a US only, or western country only connection, with no political or religious censorship, blacklisting, etc.
Keywords:
Social media censorship and bias, Facebook Censorship, YouTube Censorship, Email censorship & blacklisting, Twitter Censorship, Wordpress.com censorship , Instagram censorship, Embarqmail censorship and blacklisting, CenturyLink censorship and blacklisting, Earthlink censorship and blacklisting, AOL censorship and blacklisting,
Created July 7, 2019 by Vance Jochim of the Lake County, FL Fiscal Watchdog blog, FiscalRangers.com Tavares, FL . Email: [email protected]
This page on social media censorship will be updated periodically. Bookmark it, and leave comments.
Jochim (Yokum) is on LinkedIn and is a retired Fortune 500 Internal Audit director, and former anti-corruption manager in the US Embassy, Baghdad for two years, plus two months in Kabul, Afghanistan leading anti-corruption training teams. He has an MBA, Accounting degree, Journalism degree, and was (inactive now) a Certified Internal Auditor, Certified Fraud Examiner and Certified Information Systems Auditor. He has written FiscalRangers.com in Lake County, FL since 2006. He also has videos at the YouTube channel "FiscalRangersFlorida". Jochim has written a pending eBook on Performance Audit Case Studies with a draft HERE.
Here are screenshots of three MORE conservative groups shut down by Wordpress.com:
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