Uncovered: Facebook's Persecution of Conservatives: Examining Evidence of Bias

Aug. 29, 2010 - PRLog -- On August 24th, we published a news article which dealt with a phenomenon, which we have heard talked about more and more of late, occurring on the social networking site Facebook.  In the article, we explained how Conservative Journalist Jane Jamison's entire network of friends and contacts, built up over a number of years, was expunged from Facebook for no clear reason.

When Jane requested a reason, she was pretty much given the cold shoulder by Facebook.  Knowing that the Digital World can often be a haphazard thing at best, a number of individuals might say as a result, "well, that happens all the time--no big deal--grow up."  However, the mystery deepens when another Conservative activist with a respectable web presence was also deleted without so much as a warning or " buh-bye."  This,  just a scant few weeks before, and even worse,  that Conservative was me.

Having a legion of friends and contacts built up over years,  unceremoniously swept out of your life leaves you wondering:  How am I going to piece all of these friends and affiliations back together again?  What am I going to do to fix this?  The answer; not much can be done.

Between Jane Jamison and my network of contacts, the both of us have lost over 8,000 friends and contacts which had been built up over a number of years.  No small thing, as one can see.  My "unfortunate occurrence" just so happens to have occurred right at the time of publishing my first book, A Perfect Liberal Storm, which is admittedly "heavily dismissive" of those currently in power in Washington and specifically documents why.  Jane's "bad stroke of luck" occurred right after she had published an article which was stringently critical of a local and very well-known California Democrat, Jerry Brown, for a number of documented reasons.

Is all of this a coincidence? Maybe.

Maybe not.

As a good friend has always maintained, "there are no coincidences," which should lead many to stop and think.

The Facebook News Article and the Telltale Comments by Readers

When the news article titled "Facebook shutting down Conservatives? Identities being deleted without notice" was released--this website--which was re-released on a high-volume server back in June due to traffic increases, actually groaned just a bit for the first time--such was the volume of traffic.  The article was picked up by Conservatives all over Facebook and the web and continues to spark conversations about biased censorship due to political affiliation.

The comments that have been published with the article mentioned above detail many instances of right-wingers' profiles being unceremoniously dumped without warning.  However there is much, much more.

There are many comments that both Jane and I have received that were sent to us via our "new Facebook identities" as a result of the article.  One young and very upset lady, whose name is Marix, wrote me a heartfelt letter in which she desperately needed her extensive Facebook contact list back so that she could carry on with her work  raising awareness of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.  Here is a link to her site, for those who might have lost contact with her.  I could only commiserate with her angst.  Facebook leaves few, if any, options for most to actually communicate with them in any meaningful manner.  Marix appears to be an ardent defender of her faith in Christianity, while not seeming to offend others through her discussion of her beliefs.

In other instances, we have heard of the dirty tricks that our ideological opposites play on unsuspecting Conservatives.  In one scenario a gaggle of Facebook Liberals acted in concert in order to have Conservatives removed who often espoused an effective viewpoint by "reporting them" to the Facebook administration, which will often result in the Facebook powers-that-be wiping that individual's profile from the planet, due process be damned.  In other scenarios we have learned that it's not just Conservatives, but rather there are also a number of Christians who have had their comments and even profiles deleted for putting forth their religious points of view in an effective manner.  When we checked into those particular assertions, we found, among them,  a Muslim Facebook site--which a member kindly sent to us--where the founders crowed "they are skared of us"...seeming to mock Americans.  Jane also received a number of messages from "certain politicians" who have also had their profiles deleted.

We saw other reports of Facebook freezing profiles for a length time, ostensibly as a result of the posting of Conservative links and stories--almost as punishment much like the temporary sting of a "ruler thrashing" across the palm of the hand--which some of us suffered as children.

We even saw a number of suggestions that a "Conservative Networking" site be established so that people could post, speak and otherwise interact freely without fear of being expunged.

In other accounts we heard of individuals being messaged that they must provide a cell phone number or Driver's License in order to confirm one's identity in order to post further.

We read a number of accounts where, upon being deleted, the offenders were messaged by Facebook as much as six weeks later, which warned that threatening or abusive actions would not be tolerated and deletion would occur.  Oh, gee... thanks for the warning.

One particularly memorable message wryly noted to Jane that it was ironic that Facebook required a birth certificate from a member in order to even consider re-instating their account when no such requirement was made for Obama to become President of the United States (no less.)  Good Point!

Another message was from a member who had created a page which was titled "No to Ground Zero Mosque"  and reported having 107,000 members.  That page was apparently deleted by Facebook.  When the member tried to recreate the page, she was  rewarded with a message from Facebook stating, "New Pages titled No Ground Zero Mosque" will no longer be allowed.  Free speech we can believe in, no doubt.  We do note, in this case, the recent report of an AP released directive to reporters ( most likely originating from the White House) which indicated that "Ground Zero" would be removed from any further news article references to the proposed Mosque.  Hmm...

Of Jews and Trolls and Liberal Goals

And yet other Facebook sites, which disparage Israel and say nasty things about those of the Jewish faith, are slow, if ever to be deleted by Facebook according to accounts from a number of members.  Still other comments focused on what are known as Facebook trolls who are sub-individuals whom pass themselves off as being Conservative in order to create havoc in various ways as members of a group later on.  To These we could only recommend "getting a life" --who in the world has the time or worse, the inclination for such time-burning nonsense?

The comments which we received ran the gamut from calling for a class-action lawsuit to trying divergence-type tricks in order to get a particular message across.

So the next logical question becomes:  "Are Liberals treated in the same way?"

The answer from everything we could find was a resounding "NO."

Read more at Conservative Refocus dot com.

# # #

Founded on principles of Conservatism and a free-market economy, Refocus Publishing is dedicated to providing authors, artists, and the public with an outlet for publishing not readily available through Mainstream Media and publishing houses.