Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives

[Mark]

Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives

Social media giant denies ‘systematic’ discrimination



Facebook announced Monday it was sending employees out for retraining and would discontinue some of its practices as it sought to defend itself against charges of political bias against conservatives.

The online giant denied that it’s shown “systematic political bias,” but admitted employees played a bigger role than previously acknowledged in determining what news is highlighted in the trending topics section.

Facebook also acknowledged that rogue employees may have unintentionally discriminated against conservative stories or even acted with malice in “isolated improper actions.”

rest: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/23/facebook-admits-rogue-employees-may-have-shown-bia/

[Mark]

Father of Paris Attack Victim Sues Twitter, Facebook and Google for Providing ‘Material Support’ to Islamic State

About time!! Hope he wins

The father of a young woman slain in the Paris attacks last November is suing Twitter, Facebook and Google, claiming the companies provided “material support” to the Islamic State.

Reynaldo Gonzalez’s daugher, Nohemi, 23, of El Monte, California, was the sole American murdered in the 2015 shootings and suicide bombings that killed 130 people last year. And now Gonzalez is going after those he finds responsible — at least in part — for the growth of the Islamic State.

Gonzalez filed the lawsuit against the internet companies Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California. The suit claims the organizations “knowingly permitted” the Islamic State to recruit members, raise funds and spread “extremist propaganda” via their respective mediums.

“Without defendants Twitter, Facebook and Google [YouTube], the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most-feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible,” the lawsuit read, according to CBS News.

“This material support has been instrumental to the rise of ISIS and has enabled it to carry out numerous terrorist attacks,” it continued, “including the Nov. 13, 2015, attacks in Paris where more than 125 were killed, including Nohemi Gonzalez.”

Gonzalez’s young daughter was a senior at California State University Long Beach, where she was studying industrial design. She and 17 other students were in Paris as part of a semester-abroad program. Her untimely death came when she was eating with friends at La Belle Equipe, a popular Paris eatery, when the radicalized Muslims began their raid.

In response to the lawsuit, both Facebook and Twitter said Gonzalez’s claims are without merit and all three California-based companies cited their respective policies against extremist material. Twitter noted that is has “teams around the world actively investigating reports of rule violations, identifying violating conduct, and working with law enforcement entities when appropriate.”

Facebook said, in part, if the organization notices “evidence of a threat of imminent harm or a terror attack, we reach out to law enforcement.”

Google, however, declined to offer comment, citing the fact that litigation is ongoing. It did note, though, that it has “clear policies prohibiting terrorist recruitment and content intending to incite violence and quickly remove videos violating these policies when flagged by our users.”

Under current U.S. law, internet companies are commonly exempt from liability for the material users post on their platforms. Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act provides a “safe harbor” for organizations like Twitter and Facebook. It states, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

But that protection may not safeguard the companies from Gonzalez’s lawsuit. Ari Kresch, an attorney with 1-800-LAW-FIRM who is part of the Gonzalez legal apparatus, said the lawsuit targets the social media networks not for what they published but for what they enabled.

“This complaint is not about what ISIS’s messages say,” he wrote in an email to CBS. “It is about Google, Twitter, and Facebook allowing ISIS to use their social media networks for recruitment and operations.”

Additionally, the Gonzalez lawsuit also claims YouTube, which is owned by Google, shared revenue with the Islamic State from the ads that ran with the terror group’s videos.

And Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, agrees that the legal “safe harbor” might not be enough to put the kibosh on the case against Twitter, Facebook and Google. However, he remained hopeful for Twitter, noting that the company may prevail because it will be difficult to directly link its alleged support of extremists and the actual attacks.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/06/16/father-of-paris-attack-victim-sues-twitter-facebook-and-google-for-providing-material-support-to-islamic-state/

[Mark]

Pamela Geller: Why I Am Suing Facebook

Every day I received emails from readers and members of my various Facebook groups, asking for help after having been blocked for posting a story or comment that might offend Muslims.

This is America, not Saudi Arabia. Enough.

I am suing.

The American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) is filing a federal lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenging Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) under the First Amendment. In a press release, he AFLC explained that “Section 230 provides immunity from lawsuits to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, thereby permitting these social media giants to engage in government-sanctioned censorship and discriminatory business practices free from legal challenge.” The lawsuit was brought on behalf of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, and Jihad Watch.

As the AFLC explained, “Geller and Spencer, along with the organizations they run, are often subject to censorship and discrimination by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube because of Geller’s and Spencer’s beliefs and views, which Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube consider expression that is offensive to Muslims. Such discrimination, which is largely religion-based in that these California businesses are favoring adherents of Islam over those who are not, is prohibited in many states, but particularly in California by the state’s anti-discrimination law, which is broadly construed to prohibit all forms of discrimination. However, because of the immunity granted by the federal government, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are free to engage in their otherwise unlawful, discriminatory practices.”

For years I have documented the outrageous bias of Facebook’s speech policies. Notoriously one-sided, those who oppose jihad terror, support Israel and stand against the most brutal and extreme ideology on the face of the earth (sharia) have been systematically blocked and banned. Just last month Facebook took down my page and blocked me after a devout Muslim opened fire on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Facebook said they took down my page because of their rule against “hateful, obscene, or threatening” content.

But it is not hateful, obscene, or threatening to oppose jihad terror such as we saw in Orlando. Truth is not hateful or obscene. What is hateful, obscene and threatening is that Facebook is moving to silence everyone who speaks honestly about the motivating ideology behind such attacks.

After the Orlando jihad massacre, they went into full damage control mode. Orlando showed jihad for what it is. They’re committed to obscuring that knowledge and making sure people remain ignorant and complacent about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat.

They also banned my own account for thirty days. This has happened before — when I get too close to truths they want to cover up. They’re afraid these truths will get out, and that people will start acting to remove the feckless and traitorous leaders who got us into this fix.

And to those of you who say, “Forget Facebook, we’ll do without it,” I say no. I am sick and tired of the suppression of our speech. We are unable to engage in the public square. And yes, Facebook is the public square; it’s where we connect. We have to fight for it. Shouting into the wilderness is not freedom of speech. My Facebook page has close to 300,000 followers, and combined with my pages (SIOA, SION, AFDI), the reach is another 100,000. It’s a critical connection.

Facebook has immense power over organic media — the sharing of our information and news between friends and associates. I would say too much power. They’re trying to change the people by restricting our access to information. Gizmodo reported in May:

    Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential “trending” news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project… Several former Facebook “news curators,” as they were known internally, also told Gizmodo that they were instructed to artificially “inject” selected stories into the trending news module, even if they weren’t popular enough to warrant inclusion—or in some cases weren’t trending at all.

“News curators”: what a Goebbels-like term.

Those of us who connect on Facebook have known this for years. We see it. We feel it. Which is why it is critical for our Facebook followers to share our stories on their news feeds. It is up to us to educate people.

Facebook’s unlawful, discriminatory practices have been mandated at the highest levels. In September 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel strong-armed Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook to censor posts critical of the migrant invasion. CNBC reported that Merkel was “overheard confronting Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over incendiary posts on the social network.” What kind of incendiary posts? Pro-jihad terror posts? No: Merkel was angry about posts criticizing her policy of inundating Germany with Muslim migrants.

The CNBC report continued: “On the sidelines of a United Nations luncheon on Saturday, Merkel was caught on a hot mic pressing Zuckerberg about social media posts about the wave of Syrian refugees entering Germany, the publication reported. The Facebook CEO was overheard responding that ‘we need to do some work’ on curtailing anti-immigrant posts about the refugee crisis. ‘Are you working on this?’ Merkel asked in English, to which Zuckerberg replied in the affirmative.”

This is so typical of the elites. They control policy, they control the media, they control the culture — but they can’t control the people. And this makes them crazy. If they could, they would change the people.

And so they try to change the people by restricting their access to information. My page “Islamic Jew-Hatred: It’s In the Quran” was taken down from Facebook because it was “hate speech.” Hate speech? Really? The page ran the actual Quranic texts and teachings that called for hatred and incitement of violence against the Jews. So who exactly was responsible for any “hate speech” that may have been present on the page?

When they took down the page, photos of Muslims such as this one were removed.

This is an actual photo of a Muslim holding a sign saying “Death to the Juice” at an anti-Israel rally in New York City. The photo was taken my esteemed colleague Pamela Hall. It is news. Facebook policy dictates that truth is hate speech.

Despite its content being simply factual, the page was taken down. Up only two weeks, it had 10,000 followers. Of course, I started a new page, “Islamic Antisemitism: It’s in the Quran” — like it here. But I suspect that this page won’t live long on Facebook, either. Why is Zuckerberg scrubbing evidence of Muslims inciting people to commit acts of hatred and violence? Why do his policies allow for vicious posts and pages against Israel to stand, but exposing the truth behind that Islamic hate is prohibited? That’s sharia.

Another time I received a warning on our Stop Islamization of America pages (join them!) because of this photo, another actual photo of Muslims daubing a building wall with “Kill the Jews” and “Jihad against Israel.”

REST: http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/07/13/pamela-geller-suing-facebook/

[Mark]

We're Going To Reveal The Political Biases Of Facebook's Trending News Team



Earlier today, Pamela Geller announced here on Breitbart that she plans to sue Facebook due to the platform’s constant, systemic, and unfair suspensions of conservative users. It’s a battle that’s been a long time coming for the social network, and over the next few days Breitbart will highlight precisely why.

This is a platform that’s happy to suspend activists like Geller over the slightest hint of wrongdoing, and only restores them once enough media pressure is applied. Meanwhile, it lets pages glorifying the murder of American policemen to stay up even when alerted to their presence on the site by concerned users. The company is already facing a lawsuit in Israel for allegedly allowing incitement to terrorism to remain on the platform.

In May, Facebook attempted to wriggle out of the Trending News scandal, in which it was revealed that the platform suppressed news topics of interest to conservatives, by releasing the results of an internal investigation. The report claimed there was no systemic liberal bias at the company. In other words, Facebook investigated Facebook and found Facebook innocent.

As a caveat to their report, which vociferously denied any systemic, company-mandated bias, Facebook acknowledged that they could not rule out “isolated improper actions” or “unintentional bias” on the part of its workforce.

In other words, liberals and progressives at Facebook may be censoring conservatives by accident — because they’re psychologically inclined to view conservative sources as unreliable and conservative topics as uninteresting or offensive — or via a rogue element deliberately violating company policy (that’s what “isolated improper actions” means.)

Or, to put it another way, Facebook, like all new media companies (and old media companies) has too many progressives and not enough right-wingers in its workforce. But how many, exactly? And just how radical are these progressive employees?

A research team led by journalist Charles Johnson has been trawling through the social media profiles of Facebook’s trending news team. Even for those who are aware of the progressive tilt of Silicon Valley employees, the results will be astounding.

Only one member of the trending news team has made social media posts that could be described as anything close to conservative. Virtually every member of the team has displayed allegiance to some culturally progressive cause or another — much of it extremely radical.

Two Managing Editors at Facebook, for example, have implied that the word “terrorism” should not be used to describe the actions of, well, terrorists.

Multiple employees have made posts in support of Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and the Black Lives Matter movement. None has openly supported any of the Republican candidates. None has declared their support for All Lives Matter.

Let’s start with just one example, Monica Torres.

Torres is a New York University alumna, a contributing editor to The Feminist Wire, someone who believes in censoring “microaggressions” … and a curator of Facebook’s Trending News feed.

In 2013, Torres wrote an article complaining about having to study “dead white males” in order to graduate from her English literature class. She also complained about her family falling prey to the “intoxicating allure of the American dream.”

In 2011, she wrote an article for her college paper, The Williams Record, calling on the university to accept submissions from undocumented students. With the exception of her own “Minority Coalition,” Torres also complained that “activism on campus is mostly reactionary and rarely sustained.”

It’s doubtful whether anyone could see activism on American campuses as “reactionary,” unless they were looking from the perspective of the far progressive left.

Torres doesn’t tilt slightly towards the left. She isn’t a moderate, who votes Democrat every election because she went to a liberal college and works in San Francisco. She isn’t “unintentionally biased.” No — she believes passionately in her culturally progressive values, and has worked actively to promote them.

And she is the norm, not the exception, on Facebook’s Trending News team.

Tomorrow, Breitbart Tech will publish the first of our research on Facebook’s Trending News team, which has found:

    apologists for Islamic terrorism, but no neoconservatives
    outspoken feminists, but no men’s rights activists
    vitriolic opponents of Donald Trump, but no Donald Trump supporters
    crusaders for gay marriage, but no social conservatives
    proponents of immigration, but no opponents
    defenders of Black Lives Matter, but no defenders of All Lives Matter

In short, we will reveal an environment where “unintentional bias” and “isolated improper actions,” to use Facebook’s terminology, are inevitable. Facebook’s Trending News team don’t just have progressive biases — they have the progressive biases of a DePaul University activist.

Following Facebook’s widely publicized meeting with conservatives following the Trending News scandal, Daily Caller editor Tucker Carlson, who attended the meeting, claimed that Facebook executives were receptive to his suggestion of more viewpoint diversity in their workforce. If that’s true, our upcoming articles will show just how steep of a hill they have to climb.

Facebook presides over the speech of more than a billion users. Its importance to the dissemination of information, the reporting of news, political dialogue, and plain human conversation cannot be ignored. It has the potential to wield far more influence over world events than the old media ever did. And if it wants to be politically biased, it will have to honest about it — otherwise we will.

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/07/13/going-reveal-political-biases-facebooks-trending-news-team/

[Mark]