Politics

Conservatives no longer trust Facebook, leaving platform over bias, censorship — Poll

On Wednesday, the Media Research Center (MRC) released the results of a poll that says a majority of conservatives — two thirds — no longer trust Facebook, the social media giant once dubbed “the world’s most dangerous censor.”  Additionally, one-third of those surveyed said they have either left the platform or plan to leave as a result of political censorship.

“These numbers are devastating to any CEO responsible for addressing the concerns of his customer base. According to this survey, 7% of conservatives have already left Facebook and another 25% are seriously considering it. That’s nearly one-third (32%) of conservatives on Facebook — potentially tens of millions of consumers. To make matters worse, two-thirds of conservative Facebook users trust Facebook less than they did a year ago. These trends should set off alarm bells at Facebook headquarters. They are bleeding a major customer base,” MRC president Brent Bozell said in a statement.

“The question Facebook and other social media companies need to ask themselves is this: Do you want to be seen as an open platform for all political beliefs or would you rather be considered a left-wing public interest group that censors free speech worldwide? The latter will prove to be unbelievably costly. Censorship on social media is no longer a hypothetical; it’s reality. So too is the evidence that this censorship is pointing to a massive conservative exodus,“ he added.

Here are some of the results of the survey as posted at Newsbusters:

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

1. Do you believe social media companies (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) are purposely censoring conservatives and conservative ideas from their sites?

Yes (64.6%)

No (10.8%)

Not sure (24.6%)

2. Do you TRUST Facebook to treat all of its users equally, regardless of their political beliefs?

Yes (17.1%)

No (66.1%)

Not sure (16.8%)

3. Is your TRUST in Facebook greater than, less than, or the same as it was one year ago?

Greater than it was a year ago (6.8%)

Less than it was a year ago (66.9%)

The same as it was a year ago (26.2%)

4. Which of the following BEST describes your position regarding Facebook?

I stopped using Facebook because of their censorship of conservatives (6.7%)

I am considering leaving Facebook because of their censorship of conservatives (22.2%)

I either stopped using Facebook or am considering leaving the platform for another reason (13.0%)

I am currently a Facebook user, and I am NOT considering leaving the platform (47.7%)

I have never used Facebook (10.5%)

According to Newsbusters, the poll of 1,000 likely general election voters was conducted on Aug. 22 – 27, 2018 and has a +/- 3.1 percent margin of error.

Incidents of Facebook censorship appear to have significantly increased in recent weeks as we and others have reported.  Portions of the Declaration of Independence have been censored by the site over false claims of “hate speech.”  Individuals have had their personal accounts disabled over false claims, and algorithms employed by the company have all but completely destroyed traffic to conservative sites.

Facebook’s censorship and Orwellian enforcement was the inspiration for “Banned: How Facebook Enables Militant Islamic Jihad,” a book published in 2016 by yours truly and American-Israeli Adina Kutnicki.

Thanks to one brave engineer at Facebook, we now know about the intolerant liberal attitude that seems to pervade the company.

As we reported recently, a proposal has been drafted that if passed into law, would see Facebook and other social media giants fined for the types of censorship we’ve recently seen.

Activist Chris Sevier, author of the proposal, explained:

Those individual websites are engaging in contracts with users in the states and can be regulated for bad faith, unfair dealing, and fraudulent inducement. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 would safeguard Internet providers and search engines from this act but not interactive individual websites with more than 75,000,000 people who market themselves as being open to the public and open to the sharing of ideas only to prove otherwise.

In my opinion, Facebook has perpetrated a form of fraudulent inducement, tortious interference of business relations, breach of the duty of care, unjust enrichment, and the intentional infliction of emotional distress by at first allowing conservatives and Christians to build a platform where they were supposedly free to express themselves only to then turn around and arbitrarily find some speech permissible and other speech impermissible.

One state lawmaker in South Carolina has said he would introduce Sevier’s proposal and legislators in other states have expressed interest, Sevier said.

A petition at the White House “We the People” site also calls on President Trump to pressure Congress for a legislative fix.

Additionally, a site was set up to let victims of Facebook’s enforcement tell their stories.  That site can be seen here.

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Joe Newby

A 10-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Joe ran for a city council position in Riverside, Calif., in 1991 and managed successful campaigns for the Idaho state legislature. Co-author of "Banned: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad," Joe wrote for Examiner.com from 2010 until it closed in 2016 and his work has been published at Newsbusters, Spokane Faith and Values and other sites. He now runs the Conservative Firing Line.

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