Politics

Facebook green-lights criminal activity against anti-jihad conservatives

Facebook-censorshipA funny thing happened Wednesday morning as I sat down to write my morning article.  Upon going to Facebook, I was presented with a logon dialog indicating that something was flagged by their moderators the night before.

Sure enough, Facebook said that two posts I allegedly made violated their terms of service.  Here’s the first:

FBBullshit2You’re seeing that right.  According to Facebook, a blank post somehow violates their Community Standards.  Guess you can’t write nothing without being slapped.  But that was just the first.  Here’s the second:

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

fb-bullshit2There’s only one problem with this post — I never made it.  Ever.  It didn’t even show in my activity log.  Then I saw this:

abuaj unpublishedYes, I was an admin of this page.  As it turns out, all of the admins got the exact same notices.  Let me re-emphasize — all of the admins received the notices about the exact same posts I showed above.  The only difference is the name and the profile picture.

I received a three-day ban, while other admins got slapped a bit harder.  One person got a 30-day ban for allegedly making the same two posts.

Understand — those posts are complete forgeries.  None of us ever made these posts.

Even in today’s upside-down Orwellian version of reality, forgery is still a crime.

The forgery was reported to the FBI and Facebook was notified.  But instead of going after the perpetrator, Facebook chose to punish the victims.

It’s difficult to say exactly who made these posts or how.  Some admins told me they think it could have been the work of someone wanting to take the page over.  But how could the posts have been made?

I did a Google search and discovered there are sites that let visitors create fake Facebook posts, complete with profile pictures.  Perhaps someone with the ability to post as another user (like a Facebook employee) created the posts.  Regardless, the posts are forgeries designed to hurt the admins of the page.

Multiple emails were sent to multiple people at Facebook, but apparently, they don’t care that someone, possibly even an employee, used their platform to engage in illegal activity.

Naturally, no one at Facebook responded to my emails.

Finally, I asked them if Facebook condones criminal activity against certain users.

They never responded.

If Facebook doesn’t condone criminal activity, then why would they turn a blind eye as someone used their site to commit a crime?  By their silence and by their actions, Facebook essentially green-lighted criminal activity against at least four of their users.

Exit question: How much more of this kind of abuse are conservatives willing to take before they finally stand up and do something?

Update: It seems the American Bikers United Against Jihad page is back up.  Now it remains to be seen if the forgery will get taken care of.

Related:

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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