Facebook temporarily shut down Gaines’ account at the request of the police. It came right before officers opened fire, killing her and striking her 5-year-old son. The decision put a spotlight on another Facebook activity: its routine censorship of users. Source: How Facebook censors your posts (FAQ)
If you have followed this blog, you understand social media has become a frictionless conduit for the spread of propaganda. Propaganda is messaging intended to encourage a target to take some action. There are two sides to propaganda messaging – those promoting a propaganda message and those with opposing views. The strongest form of opposition is when platform operators directly censor third-party opinions. Normally, the answer to speech someone disagrees with, is more speech, not censorship. Today, Reddit censored comments from those quoting…
German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with Facebook Nation president Mark Zuckerberg to request that Facebook Nation censor certain kinds of speech on social media: Speaking to the European leader at a luncheon, Zuckerberg was heard saying ‘we need to do some work’ in reference to the German push against racist and xenophobic posts on the Internet. ‘Are you working on this?’ Merkel, who has seen an increase in violence against immigrants in her country during a massive intake of Syrian…
Groups opposed to some U.S. immigration programs claim Facebook has suppressed their content and visibility of their groups. These allegation, if true, could be due to algorithm design errors or deliberate. Either way, these allegations illustrate the potential of social media propaganda: