What if Facebook Is the Real ‘Silent Majority’?

The New York Times ^ | 27 Aug 2020 | Kevin Roose

[John 3_19-21]

Farsebook's latest shadowban technique is to allow if not enable scammers to infest popular, trending conservative commentator's posts.

Dan Bongino's posts are flooded with scammers

Using names like "Dann Bangino Show" or "_Dan_Bangino" complete with a picture of Dan's real profile page.

farsebook has been made aware repeatedly of these scammers and does nothing to stop or remove them allowing them to phish for victims throughout the hundreds of comments on his posts.

[jmaroneps37]

“..raising questions about whether it will translate into electoral success in November.” Gee I wonder if the people who consistently support Trump on Facebook will actually go out vote for him? “I’ll take You bet your ass, for $1000 Alex.”

[ProtectOurFreedom]

We need a FReepTangle to get the pulse of FreeRepublic.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Zuckerberg said not a week ago that he was installing a “kill switch” on FB that would stop all political advertising after 11/3.

He said it was specifically because the election results might be contested.

Does not sound like he’s on the Trump team to me.

[Pollard]

More readable version, https://archive.is/Ybrjo

[Pollard]

The most-shared Facebook post containing the term “Black Lives Matter” over the past six months is a June video by the right-wing commentators The Hodgetwins, which calls the racial justice movement a “damn lie.” The second most-shared Black Lives Matter post? A different viral video from The Hodgetwins, this one calling the movement a “leftist lie.” (The Hodgetwins also have the 4th, 6th, and 12th most shared posts.)

Terrence K. Williams, a conservative comedian and Trump supporter, has averaged 86,500 interactions per Facebook post in August, more than twice as many as Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, who has averaged 39,000 interactions per post. (Mr. Trump outdoes them both, naturally, with an average of 92,000 interactions per post.)

[Bubba_Leroy]

It is quite possible that the majority of the posts on Facebook are conservative. Facebook simply does not allow those posts to appear on most user’s newsfeed. The result is that most users’ newsfeed consist of one liberal post after another.

[agatheringstorm]

LoL...next article will be about how Twitter is dominated by right-wing talking points. This is all about scaring complacent leftists into voting. Their problem is, however, they’ve been so good at silencing any dissenting voices and creating their echo chamber of leftist talking points, the vast majority of people reading this article are other leftists who were already going to vote for Biden.

[Uncle Miltie]

FB is where Grandma and Grandpa hang out, not knowing the grandkids are on instagram.

[Wonder Warthog]

"FB is where Grandma and Grandpa hang out"

Grandma and Grandpa are far more likely to vote (and vote conservative) than the grandkids.

[redpoll]

Fascinating opinion.

I went on a Facebook holiday a few weeks ago. The reason is simple: I’m overwhelmed by the leftist bullshit that I keep seeing, over and over. Now that’s probably because my friend list consists of many students who graduated from my high school classes, and the loud ones tend to dominate social media, but the unrelenting leftist bias from those students, as well as some of the adults on my feed, is astonishing.

The racism is also overwhelming, probably again due to my unique circumstances. Many of my former students are Alaska Native, and there’s a racist strain against white and/or European people that is strong in some people. Predictably, a lot of the older white women on my feed also share racist sentiments against white people. There’s also a lot of bigotry directed against Christians, a smattering of Jew hatred, a few atheists, and, of course, those who hate Trump do so with a white-hot fervor that is frightening to witness.

Facebook has a system allowing me to flag racist and bigoted comments. They always allow anti-white and anti-Christian hatred. Facebook allows anti-American statements, especially the blood libel about the United States being a racist country. One interesting impact of all those American-hating comments is that very few people post in favor of the United States. There’s very few Trump supporters, even from those whom I know personally who support Trump.

I never see anyone, at any time, post bigotry against Natives, blacks, or Islam.

One of the most disturbing things that I’m seeing on Facebook this year are the pro-Marxist memes and statements, often from recent graduates who have no idea about the ideology of the post but seem to like the message. I have a political science degree from American University (1978), from back in the day when college was actually academic, so I recognize the ideological context, but since Marxism isn’t taught outright to most recent graduates, they don’t understand what they’re promoting.

My read of this column is that the author is fearful seeing opinions he doesn’t like. I’d be scared of Ben Shapiro, too, if I was on the left. He knows how to communicate with young adults, and takes no prisoners. So the author’s statements should be taken as a warning call to fellow leftists that Facebook needs to be targeted so these messages are silenced. It is ever the way with those people.

[rx]

With FB's algorithms for presenting a user information from their friends' posts (generally), those from interest groups and some public posts, it's easy to get the wrong impression of what's in the overall traffic flow as one might extrapolate from what one sees going by.

I have 600 some friends, but typically only see posts from well less than three dozen in a given week.

As all FB traffic is heavily manipulated, it's not reliable to infer or trust much of anything beyond what one sees.

[LRoggy]

Watch this explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te_wmHxdNE0&t=668s

It’s very well laid out. It was noted for example that Ben Shapiro has more interactions in a month than the NYT, WP, ABC, NBC and PBS COMBINED.