How Conservatives Are Being Destroyed by Facebook, Twitter and Google Without Even Realizing It

Townhall.com ^ | Jan 13, 2018 | John Hawkins

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Today, as you read this, my website Right Wing News is shutting down operations. It has been around since 2001, but became massive a few years ago because of Facebook.

Remember the mainstream media liberals going out of their minds because the Russians reached almost 150 million people with their $100,000 Facebook ad buy? In July of 2015, in just a week, the Right Wing News Facebook page reached 133 million people. Because conservatives were sharing content they were interested in, little ol’ Right Wing News (well, I guess nearly 3.6 million Facebook likes isn’t so little) was driving the same amount of web traffic as some of the biggest newspapers in America. Barack Obama’s Facebook page was 36 times bigger than our page; yet we had 7 times as many people talking about our content.

Ironically, that’s a big part of what killed the website.

You see, what Facebook giveth, Facebook can take away. So, why would Facebook want to kill extremely successful Facebook pages that its users enjoyed?

One of the reasons goes back to something I told multiple reporters during the 2016 election. I believe that all of the thriving right wing Facebook pages activated large numbers of what I like to think of as “instinctive conservatives.” You know, the sort of people who love God, guns and America, but who don’t follow politics day to day, read National Review or consume any of Milton Friedman’s books. From what I could see on Facebook, that group of people LOVED, LOVED, LOVED Donald Trump and I believe they were responsible for getting him the GOP nomination and probably even got him over the hump in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. I think the liberals that run Facebook came to that same conclusion.

Before the election season got into full swing, Facebook had already made some mild downgrades to reach. Afterwards, when liberal mainstream media outlets were screaming about Russian ad buys and “fake news,” Facebook systematically, methodically reduced the reach of all its pages with each algorithm change. By then, most of us understood where it was going long-term. If Facebook killed every conservative page overnight, there would be a huge outcry. On the other hand, if Facebook slowly strangled us to death, we’d fade away and would people even notice?

Yes, non-political pages were affected, too, although conservative pages got it worse and, yes, there is a business incentive to do this. When people click on a news story, they leave Facebook. On the other hand, conservative pages like Right Wing News were able to become so massive because we are putting out content an awful lot of people on Facebook want to read. That’s no longer going to be allowed in part because we’re putting out a message that the liberals who run the company don’t want out there.

In addition to that, as someone who has been working for a living in this business since 2005, let me drop a little truth bomb on you. We are now in a very oversaturated, corporation-dominated media environment. If you don’t already have a legacy website that captured traffic years ago and held onto it, huge traffic you can bring in from elsewhere, or millions of dollars to spend, your chances of getting a political website off the ground today are infinitesimal.

That gets to the heart of the biggest problem conservatives don’t realize that they have.

Social media IS the new public square. It’s the place you go when you want to reach out and find an audience.

…….Except Facebook has for all intents and purposes announced that it’s killing off pages. So much for having a conservative voice there.

As James O’Keefe just revealed in his latest sting, Twitter felt comfortable banning pro-Trump accounts and one of his unwitting sources said, “Yeah you look for Trump, or America, and you have like five thousand keywords to describe a redneck. Then you look and parse all the messages, all the pictures, and then you look for stuff that matches that stuff.” Charles Johnson, who’s a conservative gadfly, is currently suing Twitter because it admitted that he didn’t violate Twitter’s policies; Twitter just wanted to get rid of him. It’s good to know that if you’re conservative, you can spend years building up an audience on Twitter and the liberals at Twitter can arbitrarily throw you off their service because they decide they don’t like your views.

Speaking of building up an audience on a platform for years and then getting screwed, YouTube is also doing that to conservatives. YouTube arbitrarily decided that many conservative videos should be demonetized. Yes, there were profane or gross liberals demonetized as well, but just presenting a conservative point of view was enough to have YouTube cut people off. Dennis Prager’s PragerU is suing YouTube for exactly that reason. Just to give you an example of the sort of content YouTube thinks is over-the-line, here are some of the videos it demonetized: Why America Must Lead, The Ten Commandments: Do Not Murder, Why Did America Fight the Korean War, and The World’s Most Persecuted Minority: Christians. Of course, YouTube would claim that it’s not censoring the videos because it didn’t take them down. However, people are not going to spend large amounts of time and money putting together high-production-value videos if they’re not going to be allowed to make money on those videos because of their political beliefs.

Furthermore, YouTube’s radically liberal parent company Google is being sued by James Damore for targeting white men and conservatives. Incidentally, Damore was fired from Google after he wrote an internal memo for other employees to read (something that is common at Google) called, Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber: How bias clouds our thinking about diversity and inclusion. Don’t kid yourself because if you are conservative, “diversity” and “inclusion” don’t include you. If you want a more concrete example of that besides its heavily biased search engine which pretty clearly prefers liberal sources over conservative ones, the latest controversy with Google is that if you search for many prominent conservative websites, it has a “fact checking section” next to them while many sketchy liberal websites don’t.

Many of these companies effectively became monopolies because they worked hard to serve ALL of their users. Now that they completely dominate their spaces in the marketplace, their liberal political views are impacting their services. As Robert Conquest once said, “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing” and that is a much bigger threat than most conservatives realize.

It’s easy to say, “Build your own social media website and compete with them,” but we’re talking about companies with billions of dollars and monopolistic control of their markets. The obvious solution would be to break these companies up or to at least acknowledge their importance to modern society and regulate them heavily, but conservatives don’t seem to be interested enough in either solution to even THREATEN to do this.

We’ve already lost the schools, Hollywood and the mainstream media. What happens when you can’t get out conservative opinion via social media because they block, shadow ban and demonetize everyone who gets any traction? What happens if they put rules in place that essentially make expressing conservative opinions something that gets you kicked off their service? You’re pro-gun? Sorry, not allowed. You don’t like gay marriage? Get out of here. Criticizing Black Lives Matter? Out of bounds! We can hope for the best, but that seems like the future we’re headed toward and it’s one that will leave conservatism weaker than ever.

[IrishBrigade]

‘The power of Facebook is that millions of people start looking for others by name on Facebook, find them, connect with them’

that’s true, and to that end it is a great tool, as it does expand our everyday lives (I found out about my 50th HS reunion on FB, and am grateful for it)...but, one-sided groupthink predominates, and thus intimidates...

[Chgogal]

No, liberal elites like ZFuckerberg are the culprits.

[j.argese]

You brag about not using FB but in the next breath you provide a detailed, albeit your own description. That would be indicative of someone who:

1. Has no idea what he's talking about.

2. Someone who lies about what he does.

Which are you?

[Dan in Wichita]

I have a somewhat similar story to tell.

In 2003, I started up a website dedicated to the study of United States coins. I presented lots of unique value trend data and key date analyses. I also presented a "Coins and US History" section to describe the overlap between American history and its coinage.

I proudly declared my site was not a politically correct sanctuary. Historical references would not be sanitized through the filter of Leftism, but rather described as a proud American might tell it (though I didn't make up stuff or present false views).

And away I went. Worked hard for years, building up original, unique content, of benefit to primarily US coin collectors. Google noticed how many other sites were linking to me voluntarily, and rewarded me with growing traffic (and income, trough ad space sales, eBay sales, etc.) By early 2011, I had 8000-10000 visitors daily, and I had built a nice little part time income, putting me on track for an early retirement from my day job.

On Feb 24, 2011 came the first of the major Google algorithm shifts. They gave it a name. It was called Panda. I immediately lost 35% of traffic and income. More algo shifts came later, of which Penguin was a notorious soul crusher.

These algo shifts hurt lots of people, with no discernable biases against conservative leaning sites. Supposedly, there were things webmasters could do to counter the algo shifts and get back into the good graces of Google.

I spent 2-3 years and thousand of dollars on consultants trying to win back my audience. They had me doing things like adding "nofollow" coding to outbound links, disavowing certain inbound links, repositioning display ads, etc. It took alot of effort, but nothing helped, as my rankings and audience continued to swirl down the toilet. It just didn't make any sense why this was happening so drastically.

By 2014, I had lost 95% of my traffic. Almost a total wipeout. Dreams of being my own boss had gone up in smoke. I stared a FB presence in 2012 and a blog, but have never gained any traction. Today, I remain at a 95% loss.

It wasn't until sometime last year, after reading about the inexplicable demise of cyberspace conservatives that I began to wonder if my catastrophic losses might have been due not to so much to how my site was technically structured, but rather my right of center viewpoints were offensive to Google and FB.

I will stay tuned. Possibly there will be class action lawsuits I should join. But then again, what if these lawsuits end up in a court dominated by Obama judges? SOL once again.

[SandRat]

I learned early, in the creation of “Social Pages, Networks” for Security Reasons (OPSEC), ‘STAY OFF of them”!

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

That’s a great idea, how can that get started? I freakin hate Fecesbook with a passion. It’s a glorified party phone line that does absolutely nothing useful but spread leftist BS with this ultra dickhead Dork F**kerberg waltzing around like he’s the King of Utopia

[angcat]

I have been suspended many times for at least 30 days due to my opinions. The two words that they really dump me for is Muzzie and Fag.

[Presbyterian Reporter]

Your post #26 must have some secret coding. When I did a google search of various sentences in your post #26, google returned no results.

But from the succeeding post #27 I did a google search for the sentence: “I realized a couple of years ago what FB was doing and how it was luring the naive into it’s net”. Google found the post.

Do you have any explanations for the discrepancy?

[enumerated]

“we just gave them a tax cut from 35% to 21% and stuck the tab to individual Americans.”

Your comment plays into the classic leftist tactic of fomenting class divisions in order to discredit the conservative agenda.

Every time conservatives take a brave step toward individual liberty and away from big government redistributive socialism - by passing tax cuts, scaling back government programs, and deregulating industry - the left attempts the same false argument: that limitations on the size and scope of government only benifit the rich at the expense of the middle class.

It is a false leftist argument and you are playing right into it.

Cutting corporate taxes rates from 35% to 21% was a huge win for conservatives. But you are right that tax burden on the middle class is way too high.

So, if you believe, as I do, that taxes on middle class did not get cut enough, then let’s work to address that problem, but please let’s not fall for the leftist lie - that cutting corporate rate cuts is somehow “sticking it to the American middle class” - let’s not repeat leftist propaganda here on FR.

[COUNTrecount]

Bookmark

[Yaelle]

Dennis Prager’s Prager University is also suing YouTube because his videos (very short animated vids showing the conservative slant on many social and economic topics and delivered by excellent sources) do not violate YouTube’s banning policies (as written, porn or violence) yet many are banned for viewpoint alone.

[neverevergiveup]

“DemocRATS will NEVER leave elections in the hands of the voters again, after Trump won !”

Not just them, but people like Soros and all who feel justified in manipulating the world to mold it into what they want it to be.

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

Twitter banned me for a week last week because I disparaged The One B. Hussein. Didn’t use any curse words, I just wrote that Obama did nothing for 8 years but empower, defend and help spread radical Islam while kicking the legs out from the USA and it’s allies on every level. It’s the truth, radical Islam never had it so good under that guy while nothing positive happened to the USA. So they banned me. Meanwhile I see Rosie O’Donnells twitter account “F Trump” “Die Trump” oh she’s not banned, of course not.

[Yaelle]

There is no reason not to use Twitter. You don’t have to fear write a tweet but it’s the fastest source to see what is going on in any language on the planet where there is an important event. A terror attack, a Trump tweet, an earthquake, anything. You don’t need to follow or watch a feed. Just search whatever you want to know and read the info from people who are there. It’s very equalizing in that way. You have the President of the United States, But you also have an Iranian teen in Teheran being attacked by armed guards. I’d prefer a non censored ‘twitter” style format, non leftist organized, which is probably going to happen one day, but of all the platforms it’s to me the least objectionable if you USE it when you wish to, not follow a stupid feed.

[sheana]

Like you I use Facebook to stay in touch with family and firefighters who became friends before everyone retired and moved.
That’s it. I don’t do politics on FB and ‘unfollow’ anyone who does. Left or right. Doesn’t make a difference to me. It’s not why I’m there. If I wanted to do politics on FB I would follow/join political FB pages. I haven’t and won’t.
I don’t do FB news either and don’t understand why anyone would.

[enumerated]

“Because a percentage of Democrats are Progressives and their lies must be countered.”

That sure seems to be the prevailing belief, but I’m not so sure.

I like the idea of not participating - I stay away from Facebook and other leftist cesspools, and “vote with my feet” by choosing not to give ratings and viewerships to offensive media venues.

I feel our attention is what they are vying for, and I love depriving them of that.

Back in the ‘80s when I was raising my kids there was a theory in child behavioral psychology called “extinction therapy”, which held that the best way for a parent to eliminate an undesirable behavior was to ignore it to death.

The idea was that a child uses misbehavior (temper tantrums, disobedience, slovenliness, association with bad types, and all kinds of disapproved of behavior) in an attempt to gain control - a type of blackmail - “if you don’t give me my way, I will [fill in the blank].

With this emotional blackmail, any attention or intervention, whether punishment, anger, rebuke, pleading, negotiating, calm reasoning, positive or negative, is like paying ransom - it makes their blackmail a success. Paying attention is like oxygen and only feeds the flame. The remedy is to deprive them of that reaction, - to pay no attention.

This is why I wish conservatives on FR would stop reposting every leftist article and discussing it ad nauseum - I know the intention is good - to do opposition research, see what the enemy is planning, trade ideas on how to rebut leftist propaganda, or to express outrage or anger, etc..

But I think in the end, all we are doing is giving them ratings, giving them a voice, allowing ourselves to be used as a tool to pass on and repeat their words.

They probably laugh and say “look how easy it is to make up some disgusting lie about Trump, or some other conservative, and put it on FB or Twitter - and if it’s outrageous enough, then Hannity, Tucker Carlson, FR, etc. will repeat whatever we say word-for-word, and talk about it for the next week!”

[Bryanw92]

>>which held that the best way for a parent to eliminate an undesirable behavior was to ignore it to death.

I remember that. Screaming, ill-mannered brats running around while “parents” ignore it to death. If you gave the “parents” a look or said something, they’d say something stupid like, “ be thankful you don’t have to deal with them all the time”.

Progs don’t need our attention. In fact, they want us to go away so they can create their socialist utopia. Do you really believe that they do what they do and think what they think to get our attention? Do you think they crave our approval or even our disapproval? They literally don’t care what we think and when you check out, you give them what they need most—free reign over the most powerful information tool ever invented.

[palmer]

1 result (0.24 seconds)

Search Results
Seeing beyond the obvious at Google
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/934215/posts
Jun 23, 2003 - 21 posts - ‎18 authors
Did you learn why google.com no longer indexes FreeRepublic? Something happened - either at google or FreeRepublic - during the first week of February, 2002. Before that date, a search for "Jim Robinson site:www.freerepublic.com would return tens of thousands of hits. After that date, the same search ..."

[palmer]

My previous post is to show you are correct. In the past Google would immediately index all of our FR comments, so I would have seen yours in my search results. Now the index contains old comments, but apparently not the new ones. I will keep checking.

[gibsosa]

“glorified party line” —— Nailed it! post of the day!!