That will be the subject of a large article coming out very soon from me at OpEdNews, not just my own jaundiced subjective accounts, but those of some of the most active people in Facebook politics, whose opinions and comments I have compiled for an article to run after the Midterm Elections.
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I will note at this point that over the past summer, during one of my 33 stints in Facebook Jail over the past two years, I did contact the Federal Communications Commission, which promptly replied that while sympathetic to such concerns, that they had no statutory power to regulate any social media whatsoever.
My most recent experience began about 2 a.m. this morning during a mild bout with insomnia, when I posted a short one sentence comment on a group page called Progressive Revolution, a simple request from the Administrator of the group as to whether to change the name of the group, and if so, how to change it. I suggested merely adding "2020" to the group name, and that got me immediately slammed into FB jail.
I filled out the appeal contact form, but of course, nothing ever happens with such appeals. They are meaningless "feel good" appendages that mean absolutely nothing, just to make you feel a little better about the obvious: you just got your First Amendment rights stomped on.
One commenter on one of these many earlier articles put it bluntly:
"Surely you don't expect anything resembling Freedom of Speech when you are on Facebook, since it is a private corporation, and the bottom line is that you are playing in Mark Zuckerberg's private sandbox."
Indeed, a far cry from Mr. Zuckerberg's initial statement in his IPO offering that he wanted Facebook to open up and improve communication around the world.
Indeed, it has done so, brilliantly and consistently, except for those pesky algorithm robots who are programmed to notice the number of posts, the subject of the posts, and all sorts of other criteria for which I have not one single clue.
If Facebook posted clear and specific rules, this censorship would be more tolerable, but since for whatever unknown reasons they prefer to leave it in the gray area of guess work, you never know what invisible line you are crossing, or which person or which robot on their Security Team you have angered.
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I have written at least 5 times to the entire board of directors of Facebook and especially to their General Counsel/Vice President, Colin Stretch, whom you may recall being questioned in one of the early US Senate hearings, the one before Mark Zuckerberg came a few months later to answer questions. Colin is leaving Facebook at the end of this year.
Not once has any member of the Board of Directors nor any of the Facebook Executives ever answered my Personal Message nor my Fedexed hard copy letters merely suggesting that they post some clear and definable rules. Facebook has no phone numbers that are accessible, and all email addresses are strictly inaccessible.
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I will next open this article's discussion to some comments from individual activists whom I have known over the past few years. One said point blank that for an activist who had never been in Facebook Jail that they should "step up their game." Most of the serious liberal or progressive activists I know have been in FB jail at least ten times in the past two years. I have been there 33 times, as best I can count....
Staring with the eloquent response by Rich Lyons, the Web administrator at Bernie Sanders Grassroots Family Network, Field Representative at Massachusetts Teachers Association, and Founder and Administrator at Massachusetts For Bernie Sanders
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