Facebook Staff Quit Amid Unprecedented ‘Alt Media’ Censorship

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Facebook staff quitting after alternative media censorship

Facebook’s war on so-called “fake news” has resulted in a number of staff walking out and quitting the social media giant in disgust, according to the New York Times

As social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Google crackdown on free speech, employees have begun speaking out against the sneaky tactics being employed to rid the internet of diversity.

According to engineers, Facebook have begun tweaking their algorithm to blacklist many alternative media websites that question establishment views.

Csglobe.com reports:

Many of the sites are also financially dependent on ad revenue earned by organic and referral traffic directed by Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

Now, it appears Facebook’s new algorithmic censorship practices are causing some of its employees to quit.

According to the New York Times, three current and former anonymous employees claim the company has had a new tool developed specifically to restrict certain kinds of posts from appearing in users’ news feeds in certain geographic areas.

This form of censorship has been deployed under the auspices of facilitating Facebook’s entry into the Chinese market. Previously, the company did this in Pakistan, Russia, and Turkey, where the respective governments requested the ability for third parties to review and block posted content. Facebook granted the requests and removed approximately 55,000 total pieces of content.

Now Facebook wants access to 1.4 billion people in the world’s second-largesteconomy, China, and they are willing to adhere to draconian censorship practices in order to do so. It could be a complete coincidence that this new push happens to coincide with Facebook’s crackdown on alternative media, which has caused several employees to tender their resignations.

A Facebook spokeswoman responded to the report in a statement:

“We have long said that we are interested in China, and are spending time understanding and learning more about the country. However, we have not made any decision on our approach to China. Our focus right now is on helping Chinese businesses and developers expand to new markets outside China by using our ad platform.”

The question now is whether there is a connection between two different but simultaneous pushes for censorship by the largest social media platform in the world.

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