Posted on 09/03/2014 7:34:34 AM PDT by WXRGina
For many years I resisted joining Facebook. I looked at it with disdain, as nothing more than a do-it-yourself surveillance network, a government spy’s treasure trove, which, of course, it is. I finally decided it could also be a useful tool in sharing my columns and networking with fellow patriots. I knew I wouldn’t stupidly post information about myself that I didn’t want everyone and their dog to know, like photographs of my lunch and when and where I’m away from home at the moment (hello, house burglar!), so I broke down and joined last October.
I quickly learned how the site works, and I also observed the strange way the “news feed” page doesn’t seem to make sense, how some stories take off with lots of attention and others of equal or more importance are hardly noticed. You can organize your news feed by “top stories” or “most recent,” and I set mine to “most recent,” but Facebook keeps changing my setting back to “top stories.” Why? I believe it’s because Facebook manipulates these “top stories,” whatever they consider them to be. It likely manipulates the “most recent” stories, too, by simply omitting some and showing others.
We know that Facebook does manipulate our news feed page. It recently admitted using close to 700,000 users as unwitting guinea pigs in a purported “scientific” study to see how they would react to being flooded with positive or negative posts on their news feeds. Many users were outraged by this. Others, if they were even aware of the study, just shrugged their shoulders, re-closed their eyes and went back to playing Facebook video games and “poking” each other.
When we sign up on Facebook, we should know that it is a company run by liberals. The young CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is a leftist and known supporter of Barack Obama (or whatever his name is). That should tell you plenty about where his sympathies lie. Facebook’s notorious censorship of conservatives and pro-family advocates comes as no surprise, although it’s utterly detestable in a “free” society like ours is supposed to be. I have known people who have had their pro-life, pro-family pages deleted by Facebook without warning or explanation, including Americans for Truth About Homosexuality’s Peter LaBarbera, who had his personal page deleted without reason or notification, although the reason was undoubtedly the iron fist of “political correctness,” since Pete tells the truth about the immoral, unnatural and unhealthy behavior of homosexuality and its tyrannical, activist movement.
While it may be hard to actually see manipulation of stories on Facebook, because you can’t see what’s being buried, there are dramatic, obvious examples of Facebook manipulation. One of the biggest ones I know is that of Renew America’s Facebook page. Renew America became a co-sponsor and promoter of the Conservative Majority PAC’s Pledge to Impeach drive to recruit congressmen and the American people to commit to the impeachment and removal from office of the lawless Obama and his collaborators for their anti-constitutional, even treasonous, crimes against the United States.
In his July 7thcolumn, “Is Facebook Blocking RenewAmerica’s Impeachment Drive?” President and Editor of Renew America, Stephen Stone, wrote:
On April 15, RenewAmerica’s Facebook page dramatically surged to 100,000 fans — after years of being parked around 10,000.
… The obvious reason for the surge in fans was RA’s prominent promotion of Obama’s constitutionally-required impeachment in article after article, graphic after graphic, spread across our Facebook page and shared with recipients week after week, beginning late last summer.
Within a week after reaching this milestone, our Facebook page grew by another 10,000 fans — an increase of nearly 1,500 a day — and within a month, our page reached 150,000 fans, a phenomenal expansion that continued to increase between 1,000 and 2,000 a day.
All due mainly to RA’s aggressive public push for impeaching the most lawless, traitorous president in our country’s history. This impeachment push was the only distinguishing thing RA was doing differently that could possibly explain the remarkable escalation of its Facebook page’s influence after years of plateauing around 10,000.
The obvious connection between our vocal impeachment effort and our dramatic surge in reach was impossible to dismiss.
Facebook’s “Obama brigade” to the rescue
A month after RA’s Facebook page reached 100,000 fans — and just days after it surpassed 153,000 — our rate of “likes” began plummeting as precipitously as it had risen. This sudden collapse began noticeably May 14. In the eight weeks since then, the page has gained just 7,000 new fans — dropping from 1,500 new likes a day to just 100 a day, a 93 percent decline.
This is the evil face of Facebook. It is the face of burgeoning communist censorship. It is the face of the anti-Americanism of the radical Left. It is the face of the metastasizing tyranny that is fast growing in our nation. It is the face of a company that will do the bidding of the lawless despot in the White House to subvert or silence the message of those opposed to his “fundamental transformation” of the United States into a socialist-communist hell-hole.
Many have lamented the lack of a conservative option to Facebook. Even if someone had the knowledge, money and ability to create and launch such an alternative, the website would be hard-pressed to ever gain the reach that Facebook has. Facebook is simply a powerful behemoth.
Respected as the world’s most popular social media service, Facebook has a duty to its far-reaching community, and to the nation that enabled that community, to be fair and neutral in matters of legitimate politics. Considering that the Constitution prescribes impeachment and removal as the sole remedy to a lawless president, Facebook has no valid justification for squelching vitally important public discourse in a partisan effort to protect an unprecedentedly errant chief executive.
… In a truly free country, no subversive bully should be allowed such inordinate sway, without challenge, in the political arena. I call upon Facebook to cease and desist from any appearance — or reality — of interfering with the growing movement to impeach and remove Barack Obama, and let the American people, in ways mandated by the Constitution, decide the man’s fate.
I don’t know what it would take to stop Facebook from being a censorship goon for the Obama regime. I have read of lawsuits against it over censorship, but I have seen little evidence that Facebook gives a rip about being even-handed.
Those of us who know the Lord and have studied His Word, know that the future is a horribly dark place of unimaginable tyranny and global, even supernatural, surveillance. We’re watching it fall into place more each day. We should not be surprised by any of this, and we’re not, although that doesn’t mean we don’t speak out against it.
Meanwhile, I’ll continue to use Facebook until its censors delete my page for containing soon-to-be-outlawed “hate speech,” since I speak the truth about their beloved Dear Leader, his evil schemes and the vile agenda of the radical Left.
the REAL obama......
when he isnt grinning or trying desperate to control his otherwise creepy face.....the REAL OBIE...does indeed .pop through
One possibility is Facebook purged the fans. There are a few anecdotes in this article about some people purged by Facebook. But if Facebook purged 1000's of conservatives (via some algorithm), who would they complain to and how would anyone find out?
What’s a Face Book?
As long as you know that, you can function pretty well on Facebook.
If you’re on it, recommend Renew America’s page to all your friends.
Sure it is possible but a drop in likes is not hard evidence of facebook wrongdoing. Need more than that.
The blinking eyes are soooo creepy!
the blinking eyes do lead an air of reality fo “manipulated” aka “photoshopped” images dont they.
they seem to bring out the best....or the worst in the “blinker”
This is one area that I believe is lacking on the Right. The counterattack of activists and bloggers.
When I see AP, or Yahoo or Reuters report a slanted story, it is commonly without an author attached. This galls me because it is like an enemy firing arrows from a high tower, and there is no shooting back. You cannot sling an arrow at an individual. A "drive-by" as Rush likens to them. Counterattacks have to be personal.
Another instance, the Trade Mark division of the US government pulls the trademark of the Washington Redskins. But the initial stories did not have the names of the decision makers. It is fitting to identify the bureaucrats who made this awful decision. Even sending emails directly to them ridiculing their decision.
FWIW
Whatever. You can not see what you don’t want to see all day long, but I will continue to see what’s glaringly obvious.
People believe all sorts of things through sloppy analyses. Some people believe 9/11 was an inside job. Mean very little in the court of public opinion without real proof. You have nothing.
I am not aware that Facebook has admitted to wiping out “Likes” on a facebook page. My deal is simple - innocent until proven guilty. A drop in “Like” stats does not have to be some conspiracy. It could be the people that really support impeachment already hit the Likes and it has topped out. There are many on the left, right and middle that do not support impeachment including many at this site. I am not one of them as I was calling for impeachment years ago regardless of what the Senate does. But even many die-hard conservatives are not interested in impeachment.
Regardless all you have is suspicion and not proof. Stats go up and down. To really find out you need someone on the inside. Good luck!
Facebook didn’t “wipe out likes.” It suppressed Renew America’s presence on people’s news feeds.
http://www.wnd.com/2014/09/facebook-caught-suppressing-news-stories/?cat_orig=diversions
OK. just wondering if I missed something. So Facebook admits messing with algorithms and news feeds of a global nature but that has nothing to do with going into an individual page and editing their “like” count. In fact does Facebook administrators even have the ability to mess with Likes on a particular page? I doubt it. That is coded. So the accusation is that programmers hard edited data on a particular page? Doesn’t even make sense. Even if they could do it you have no proof they did.
I love FB and put a lot of political stuff on there. I have a lot of conservative “friends” who hate Obama as much as I do. And I love posting stuff on liberals pages like the SPLC. It’s comforting to see how many people on FB hate Obama. It’s really fun to post stuff on dem pages. I also stay connected to family on there. If you hate FB, don’t use it, but I enjoy it.
Wait a minute. Is that you, Valerie?
ping
Is that all you’ve got? Good grief.
I am an admin on a page with 800K+ likes. In the last quarter of 2013 and up until May-ish of 2014 Facebook tweaked its engagement algorithms. Starting in roughly October of 2013 likes started skyrocketing for everyone in our professional network. Then in May of 2014 the gravy train stopped for everyone including ours. We have been using Facebook since around 09 and our growth has been consistent and now flows at the same rate as before the ‘bump’ (relative to our size). My point? Your drop in May/June matches everyone that I know. While I agree FB is liberal at it’s core I don’t think they’ve targeted you in the way you think they have. If that were the case then they tarted preschool pages too.
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