Generally the term genocide tends to describe physical violence and/or killing of a particular group of people, or as some define it, the "intentional action to destroy a people," which frankly is exactly what big tech and social media have been doing to conservatives online, a campaign which was kicked into overdrive after the 2016 presidential election.
VIRTUAL GENOCIDE BY BIG TECH & SOCIAL MEDIA GIANTS
More recently we all witnessed the deplatforming of Alex Jones and Infowars where big tech & social media collectively attempted to silence his voice by kicking him off platforms, terminating their services to livestream his shows, disabled his commenting system, all within a 24 hour period.
This issue has reached such a critical point the President of the United States has started speaking about it at rallies, tweeting his concerns over the censorship practices, with his latest from August 24, stating "Social Media Giants are silencing millions of people. Can’t do this even if it means we must continue to hear Fake News like CNN, whose ratings have suffered gravely. People have to figure out what is real, and what is not, without censorship!"
What these companies, platforms and organizations are doing is committing "virtual genocide" against conservatives online.
They may not be murdering our bodies, but they are attempting to "destroy a people," a particular group of people, namely Independent and conservative media.
THE LATEST VICTIMS
Over the past few days we have noticed an uptick in some prominent names being arbitrarily censored, including two well known writers and authors, one conservative think tank group, and a long-standing conservative website which publishes video content.
On August 23, Salena Zito, journalist for New York Post, the DC Examiner, a CNN contributor and author of "The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics," mentioned that a Facebook post promoting her recent article titled "Why Trump’s supporters won’t care about Cohen and Manafort’s convictions," was removed.
In that piece Zito described her visit to Ohio to speak to voters, and their reasons for continuing to support President Trump.
She tweeted a question to Facebook's Twitter account, saying "So this is interesting…@facebook took down my post of my reporting for the @nypost — I’ve received nine separate messages from readers telling me the same thing has happened to them. ‘sup @facebook ?"
In a follow up article, Zito describes her attempts to get an answer as to why her piece, which violated no "community standards," was removed:
First I politely published a public Tweet requesting some direction. No answer. I noticed that their Direct Message was open on Twitter so I asked in that format. No answer. Then I turned to their own page and asked through a series of confusing messaging options that appear to require a Ph.D. to access let alone find, still no answer.
Ninety minutes after removing it, the article reappeared as if nothing ever happened. No one told me why it was taken down. No one told me why the piece suddenly reappeared with no explanation of what had happened.
Facebook offers no transparency for its methods or decisions.
The article was based on my conversations with Trump voters. It had no expletives, conspiracy theories, hate speech or sexual language. What sort of algorithm would find it, much less censor it?
In a subsequent tweet, Zito posted an image of her original post, which Facebook stated "We removed this post because it looks like spam and doesn’t follow our Community Standards."
Zito was not a lone though as PJ Media reports that another journalists and director of public policy at the James Dobson Family Institute, and the author of "The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution: A Guide for Christians to Understand America's Constitutional Crisis," also had a post of her recent article titled "Democrats are overreacting to the Michael Cohen guilty plea," removed by Facebook, listing the same reason "We removed this post because it looks like spam and doesn’t follow our Community Standards."
"I reposted the screenshot and tagged Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg and the tags were immediately removed," Ellis told PJ Media. She argued that Facebook is trying to eat its cake and have it, too.
"Facebook has every right to suppress content as a private platform, but they have to do so openly in their terms and conditions, which should give every user clear notice of the agreement for use," she told PJ Media. "If they want to be a liberally biased platform, do so openly so conservatives can determine if they want to use that platform."
Instead, the Facebook team "are misrepresenting their user agreement and trying to benefit from conservatives adding to their user numbers to drive up value, but still censor selectively and against users’ reasonable expectations in signing up for the platform."
Is it a coincidence that Facebook, along with Twitter and Google/YouTube uses southern Povety Law Center (SPLC) to help them "flag" and censor content, and that group has previously targeted James Dobson, saying he ran an "anti-gay" institution, and that Jenna Lynn Ellis is the director of public policy at the James Dobson Family Institute.
You decide.
Next up, American Thinker, a conservative site that has been around since 2003, has also been targeted by Facebook. On August 23, their editor and publisher Thomas Lifson, reported "It looks as though Facebook has altered its algorithms overnight so that people posting conservative content receive a notice from Facebook that it looks like "spam" and has been declined. Overnight, we have heard from many people about AT content being declined publication as spam."
In that article Lifson also provides screen shots of multiple other conservatives showing their Facebook posts were also removed, and listed as "spam," with one showing the message "I had a Bible verse removed as Spam this morning."
Moving along, we see that prominent conservative think tank, The David Horowitz Freedom Center, after a campaign by the SPLC, had their donation processing system blocked by Visa and Mastercard, as reported on Thursday by Breitbart.
Note: Visa is denying their involvement with the blacklisting of Hororwitz's group.
The David Horowitz Freedom Center stated in a recent email that its ability to accept donations by credit card has been disabled by both Visa and Mastercard following a campaign by the SPLC to label the Freedom Center as a hate group. This situation comes shortly after Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch was forced off the funding platform Patreon following pressure from Mastercard.
The Freedom Center is the next target of the SPLC, and they are using Mastercard and Visa again in their attempt to shut down conservative voices. In an email sent to supporters, Horowitz outlined how the SPLC had convinced Mastercard and Visa to block the Freedom Center from receiving payments and donations via credit card. In the email, Horowitz requested that supporters send donations via check to a P.O. Box.
The email Horowitz sent to members begins with "We're under attack by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)....
A quick search shows this is indeed true, as SPLC has an entire page dedicated to Horowitz., claiming he is a "a driving force of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black movements."
YouTube has also claimed another victim as they have demonetized Western Journal videos. Western Journal began publishing news and opinion analysis in 2009, has grown throughout the years into a respected conservative group of websites, which now includes Conservative Tribune. WJ's videos are short, to the point, and all original content, which makes YouTube's reasoning, claiming "duplication," puzzling to their executive editor Shaun Hair.
Via Breitbart, Hair states "We had zero copyright strikes and zero community guideline strikes. Not even a recent warning. Youtube has on three occasions declined to explain or even give a single example of why duplication is other than generic language about copyright rules."
The Western Journal has previously exposed big tech’s biases through original reporting. In July, analyses commissioned by the site revealed that GOP representatives had been hit by massive declines in Facebook interactions since the social network’s algorithm changes in January. The Western Journal also found that the algorithm change disproportionately impacted conservative websites.
Across the board, more and more Independent and conservatives websites, creators, and even now some well known journalists that are not anti-conservative or anti-Trump, are being silenced, censored or otherwise targeted by big tech and social media platforms, which makes the following report all the more concerning.
Up to a dozen representatives from tech giants are planning a "secret meeting to prepare a 2018 election strategy." Their claim in regards to the meetings purpose is to gather to "discuss efforts to counter manipulation of their platforms," but their actions to date have targeted far more than what they consider bad actors trying to manipulate elections, and have focused directly on anyone that counters their liberal ideology.
BOTTOM LINE
Social media giants and big tech claim they are worried about foreign campaigns to manipulate U.S. elections, but they are the ones attempting to manipulate and meddle in U.S. elections by targeting users that do not conform to the liberal narrative. The recent examples show these efforts are continuing and increasing as the 2018 midterms draw closer.
What these big tech and social media giants are doing is the internet version of genocide.... I call it "virtual genocide."
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