Facebook purges libertarian(ish) accounts

Libertarians, mostly Americans, on Facebook are frantically working through the details of a mass ban of Facebook Pages maintained by organisations in the libertarian-conservative part of the spectrum.

One user posted this “working list” of affected accounts to another libertarian’s wall:

The Free Thought Project – 3.1 million fans
The Anti-Media – 2.1 million fans
Police the Police – 1.9 million fans
Cop Block
Filming Cops
Policing the Police
Cop Logic
Rachel Blevins
End the Drug War
V is For Voluntary
TheAnonNews
Legalizing Cannabis Hemp
End the War on Drugs
Anonymous News
Get Involved, You Live Here
Dan Dicks – 350,000 fans
Political Junkie News Media – 300,000 fans
Murica Today – 180,000 fans
Choice & Truth – 2.9 million fans
You won’t see this on TV – 172,000 fans
Modern Slavery Hilarious Vines – 129,000 fans
Fuck the Government – 168,000 fans
Punk Rock Libertarians – 190,000 fans

Also blocked were Peaceful Anarchism, Liberty One and The Truth Is Viral.

I am not personally subscribed to these pages, I am not vouching for them or identifying them as libertarian or as anything else. I prefer to limit my consumption of social media, but I have certainly heard of many of them.

Some sound a bit bonkers, others seem to have been doing important work which anyone should recognise as valuable in a democracy. It is possible Facebook has some evidence that they were up to something? There seems to be an issue with pages being “forced” to spam for reasons related to Facebooks algorithms.

I’m asking you a question: have you been tuning into these pages and what do you think is going on? Are some of these legit targets based on some criteria of public safety that you feel is valid? Or are they legitimately operated venues of dissenting opinion which is being squashed?

Tags:

Censorship, Facebook

Date:

October 12, 2018

Up next:

Before:

7 responses to “Facebook purges libertarian(ish) accounts”

Paul Marks

October 12, 2018 at 2:01 pm

Facebook and the other Social Media companies are fanatically left establishmentarian (not even anti establishment left – slavishly pro establishment left) – which is really stupid as people turn to Social Media as an ALTERNATIVE to the “mainstream media”.

In short the management of the Social Media companies are destroying the very reason that people turn to Social Media in the first place.

The head of Twitter made it official – the political model for Twitter is the State of California (its taxes, government spending, regulations….) and people who oppose this sort of politics are not welcome – Jack Dorsey (the head of Twitter) seemed not to know that the most well known person to use Twitter is DONALD TRUMP.

Of American States only New York and New Jersey are worse for business than California – and Mark Zuckerberg (the owner of Facebook) thinks New Jersey is the way to go, for example he has spent large sums of his own money backing government schools in New Jersey.

There is a radial “disconnect” between the life of these people (such as Mr Zuckerberg) as businessmen, and their collectivist (anti capitalist) politics. Ayn Rand would have argued that they are heading towards insanity – as their ideas (beliefs) do not fit with their lives.

LikeLike

What’s going on with Facebook? « Samizdata

October 12, 2018 at 3:45 pm

[…] Over at Libertarian Home, Simon Gibbs (who is the proprietor of Libertarian Home) asks: […]

LikeLike

Brian Micklethwait

October 13, 2018 at 10:28 am

Much better, a Samizdata commenter mentions WeMe:
https://mewe.com/

And another Samizdata commenter provides this link about how left wing stuff on Facebook has also been scrubbed:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/11/facebook-purge-page-removal-spam
I haven’t read this, but it sounds interesting.

LikeLike

1. Nico Metten
  
  October 14, 2018 at 6:48 pm
  
  This MeWe platform does not seem to be very economical. They say it is completely free to use and does not sell adversitment. Then how are they going to get in the costs, once it becomes popular and big? Also, they already mention that it is supposed to be a save space.
  
  Also, the platform still is essentially a website with a headquaters. Any such platform can and will be bullied to censor if they become big.
  
  The only solution to censoship is decentralisation. An app that simple connects people, without storing anything. Everyone needs to store their own media on their own servers. that way the government would need to come after users individually, instead of simple making a company its enforcer.
  
  LikeLike
  
The Alchemical Anarchist

October 13, 2018 at 12:05 pm

It looks like alternativeness per se is the criterion of online suppression with the status quo being defined by the authoritarian progressivism. Hence, both liberty-lovers, who are libertarian, and right-wingers, who are traditionalist, are getting Zucked.

Such a development makes one wonder about the orthogonality of the dimensions of the Nolan chart, which has [traditionalist — progressive] on one 2-D axis, and [libertarian — authoritarian] on the other.

Logically, I think a strong case for such orthogonality can be made (see Walter Block on “plumbline libertarianism”).

Politically, however, given the current inclinations of corporate globalists, the formation of oblique counter-cliques, featuring right-wing free spirits, or free-spirited right-wingers, seems ever more certain.

Nervous as some purists might be of entering into such alliances of necessity, it presents an opportunity for libertarians and traditionalists to trash out some contentious ideological differences.

For example, nationalists keen on creating a productive ethnostate need to confront the economic issue of how systematic socialism remains toxic even when realised locally.

Equally, free-marketers keen on facilitating an entrepreneurial climate need to confront the cultural issue of how radical immigration endangers the traditions of settled folk.

Personally, I find this discursive space stimulating. And the reason it is stimulating is not just the content of what gets discussed, but the fact that actual discussion takes place at all. Earnest advocates of libertarianism and traditionalism (at least for how–for the latter may ultimately tend “fashy”) are agreed that free speech should reign.

LikeLike

Simon Gibbs

October 15, 2018 at 9:58 pm

I was attempting to approach the matter quantitatively. How many of these pages, or other pages banned the same day, were legit libertarian pages?

I regret that this venue has not yet assisted me with this errand.

LikeLike

Hector Drummond, Vile Novelist

November 30, 2018 at 9:07 pm

I opened up a Facebook page recently for the sole purpose of commenting on Spiked, which has shifted to a Facebook comments system. After one comment — just one — I got the old ‘We need to verify your identity, please upload a photo’. That was a couple of weeks ago. Needless to say, I still remain locked out of the account, and I expect it will stay that way.

Sorry I can’t help you with the original question, I’ve avoided using Facebook for years.

LikeLike