The censors at Facebook (or Meta, as it is now called) have no problem censoring people, speech, facts, and ideas with which they disagree. But it turns out the ban-happy busybodies prefer not to take what they so blithely dish out.
Conservatives and MAGAs alike have long been dismayed at the heavy hand of Big Tech moderation that always seems to crush the voices on the Right while leaving Leftists free to be menacing, disgusting, or just plain wrong. But the controversial issue of biased censorship came to a head during the runup to and aftermath of the 2020 general election. It became plain that Big Tech was overtly in bed with the Democrat party and abused its power to tilt the outcome in Potted Plant Biden’s favor.
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing two weeks after Election Day 2020 to address the policies and actions Facebook and Twitter undertook and how they affected the political outcome. Committee chair Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) explained, “My goal is to try to find out[,] if you’re not a newspaper at Twitter or Facebook, then why do you have editorial control over the New York Post?” Graham elaborated that “[Facebook and Twitter] decided, and maybe for a good reason, I don’t know, that the New York Post article about Hunter Biden needed to be flagged, excluded from the distribution, or made hard to find. That to me seems like you’re the ultimate editor,” he concluded.
Related: The Associated Press Doesn’t Understand Free Speech, And That’s Scary
If one stops and dwells too long on the fact that, had Facebook and others not suppressed the bombshell news of Hunter Biden’s laptop, fully one-fifth of Biden’s voters wouldn’t have voted for him, one can go mad. Yet the digital information manipulators of the interwebs were not only not ashamed of what they had done; they crowed about “saving America.”
But now the shoe is on the other foot, and the precious programmers are being prevented from communicating information that they feel is vitally important. The irony that their own platform — Meta, which notoriously suppressed and suppresses the voices of the Right — is the platform that now censors them is delicious. It’s always so much fun to ride the tiger as it gobbles up your enemies’ free speech, but not nearly as fun when it consumes your own.
Tech tattler The Verge was made privy to recent internal communications at Meta and is reporting that employees are disgruntled with a company policy that prevents them from proselytizing about abortion as the Supreme Court looks poised to overturn Roe vs. Wade.
In 2019, Meta established an internal communications policy of prohibiting employees from discussing “opinions or debates about abortion being right or wrong, availability or rights of abortion, and political, religious, and humanitarian views on the topic” at work. On Thursday, the company reminded its staff that the policy remains in place, even though abortion has become a hot topic. The Verge reports:
During an all-hands meeting with employees Thursday, Meta’s VP of HR, Janelle Gale, said that abortion was “the most divisive and reported topic” by employees on Workplace. She said that “even if people are respectful, and they’re attempting to be respectful about their view on abortion, it can still leave people feeling like they’re being targeted based on their gender or religion,” according to a recording of her comments obtained by The Verge. “It’s the one unique topic that kind of trips that line on a protected class pretty much in every instance.”
Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that Naomi Gleit, Meta’s Vice President of Product, posted guidance on Workplace (a version of Facebook used for internal communications by corporations and organizations). “At work, there are many sensitivities around this topic [abortion], which makes it difficult to discuss on Workplace.” Gleit directed employees only to discuss abortion at work “with a trusted colleague in a private setting (e.g. live, chat, etc.)” or in a “listening session with a small group of up to 5 like-minded people to show solidarity.” Gleit also made sure to reassure Meta’s women and fecund men that the company “will continue to offer our employees access to reproductive healthcare in the U.S. regardless of where they live.”
But abortion-zealous employees were not placated. According to The Verge, “Some employees have called on management to do away with the policy in the aftermath of a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade.”
“The policy banning discussion of abortion has caused division among employees in recent weeks, with some supporting it and others sharing their frustration about having posts on the topic removed, according to screenshots of Workplace posts and comments seen by The Verge. During the all-hands meeting led by Sandberg, Gale, and other execs Thursday, several comments about the policy were posted by employees underneath the livestream and removed as the meeting progressed.”
Poor dears. It must have been very distressing to have one’s heart-felt sentiments wiped away by cold-blooded censors like that.
The article also mentions a 10-year Meta employee who posted an article called “Support & Silence,” in which she complained that the company’s no-debate policy on the subject of abortion gave her a “strong sense of silence and isolation on Workplace.” Meta took down the article; when the employee reposted it, the invisible hand of censorship removed some of her content.
“The entire process of dealing with the Respectful Communication policy, being told why my post is violating, and crafting this new post has felt dehumanizing and dystopian,” wrote the distressed employee.
We on the Right feel you, sister. In fact, we’ve been feeling your pain for some years now.
Suffer, fascist.
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