Like I’m sure many of you, I’ve gotten postings from some right wingers who have complained about their views being censured by facebook and the like, where their posting is not being shown to others. They also have posted such hateful and such unsupportable crap like never before. When challenged, or corrected with reputable factual information they dismiss it as fake news. The Trump years that have emboldened them, and one by one I have unfriended or blocked them. The few that remain are on 30 day ‘suspension’ or whatever FB calls it.
I wonder if 1: others have done this too. 2: if the censorship that they claim is being done by FB or the deep state or whatever, is really people just tired of their nonsense and blocking them.
I have between 30 - 40 “friends” on FB that I’ve unfriended during the trump years - couldn’t take their shit anymore. Of the friends I have left, about half of them, or a little less, are trumpists, and several I’ve unfollowed so that I don’t have to see their crap, the rest I ignore because they aren’t as continual about it. I would have gotten rid of them as well except they’re extended family and I didn’t want to cause problems, but my patience is growing thin. They may yet be unfriended.
I know that some of them have had posts removed by FB directly as a result of me reporting them - I don’t mess around anymore with trying to argue sense into their thick skulls, I simply report the crap to FB and let them handle it. I’ve seen several of them make complaints about how they’re being censured and having posts removed and FB better knock it off, but I just laugh and report some more. It is kind of entertaining to report their shit and sit back to watch them suffer the consequences. I’m evil.
It’s the exact opposite of the “deep state”. It’s a company, as guided by the free market, deciding its own rules. If they don’t like it, then, as any conservative capitalist could remind them, they’re free to start their own company, with different rules. And if it turns out that their company needs to do business with other companies to thrive, and those other companies don’t want to do business with them, they’re likewise free to start new companies to compete with those other companies, too.
Tell them they are starting to sound like anti-corporate progressives - who have been moaning about the control corporations have in concert with the government for decades. That might scare them.
When, in fact, if they’d do their research and watch YouTube it’s Satanic, Catholic, Jewish, shape-shifting lizard people that are behind it.
WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!!11!!1
I know that on Twitter and FB, conservatives have complained that their posts don’t get as many likes or shares as they are entitled to, and they claim this is evidence of a “shadow ban”. Some even go as far as to adorn their hands with red ‘X’ characters as a silent protest over the invisibility (a fact that I know because their posts are very much visible to me and everyone else).
There is also the ongoing (and sometimes mass) purge of bot accounts. Conservatives see a sudden drop in their follower count and believe real supporters are being banned. They believe their followers are totally real people with names like like @txmom52590018, @azmom3420875, @patriotmom83917493, @eagle3549699 and definitely not algorithmically created and managed bots.
No, this is the opposite of evil. Thank you for your service.
And it’s a delicious mental picture: you hunched over a laptop in a spooky attic, cackling “Oh, reeeeally, Cousin BillyBob? Well, consider yourself… reported! Aunt Cracker? Reported. Uncle Erv the Perv? Reeeeported!”
I have heard from some Facebook friends that FB went in and universally changed the settings on what posts you see automatically. Sorry, I don’t remember what what the new default settings are – I didn’t care enough to check what posts would now appear on my screen.
But the people who said this were not folks who ordinarily post political messages and in fact were telling people that you might not be getting posts about your neighborhood or hobbies or whatever. So it’s possible that there’s no purge or censoring going on, just a change to recipients’ FB settings.
“Really? They blocked you for arguing for lower taxes?”
“No, the other stuff.”
“Arguing for balancing the budget?”
“No, the other stuff.”
“Capitalism?”
“No, the other stuff… do I have to say it out loud??”
I’d of liked to not let him get off so easy and continue to pin them down until they do say what the “other stuff” really is. Make 'em say it out loud.
I unfriended…Facebook altogether. In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t, as I had some good friends it was easy to remain in contact with, but it was just such a troll factory.
I don’t know about that, but they did spruce up their algorithm for whose posts show up in your feed awhile back, but it seems they’re always constantly tweaking it, so I don’t know.
Whatever they’re doing, either I have good Facebook friends, or their algorithm knows I don’t want to see political shit in my feed, because it’s quite rare that I see something political from my friends. I’ve seen zero pro-Trump posts, and maybe two or three friends that will occasionally post on progressive issues that show up in my feed. And that’s out of like 600 people.
Thank goodness. What pisses me off, though, is there is always some jagoff in a completely non-political group, like, say, about architecture in Chicago or a group about hot dogs and Italian beef, that will need to inject a side swipe about Democrats or Obama or libs in a discussion that is not in any possible way relevant and derail the topic. Why the fuck do these assholes exist? I swear to fucking God years ago there was a post about a nun throwing out the first pitch at a game at Sox Park, and somehow that feel-good lighthearted news item took a turn down Fuck Obama Avenue.