Hours Before Midterm Election, Facebook Deletes 35 Pages Including Conservative Page With 1.2 Million Fans

This is the first major election since the 2016 presidential election in the United States, and Facebook has really ramped up security. Or at least that’s the story. The unsubstantiated Russian election meddling story has been the trigger that has politicians and people calling for Facebook to intervene and begin deciding what narratives and advertising can be on their platform. This has resulted in Facebook deleting many pages, including many independent media pages with millions of followers. This, another way to look at Facebook’s recent deletions is that this is the book burning of today, disguised as trying to protect against Russian meddling in elections.  Any voices, ideas, truths we don’t like, just delete ’em. It’s also interesting to consider that the Russian’s have been used by US media and US politicians for decades to manipulate their public into submission. We’re still seeing it today. Onto the afternoon of Nov 5th, Facebook deleted 35 more pages from their platform “which they believe may be linked to foreign entities”, according to Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher. All 115 accounts, 80 from Instagram and 35 from Facebook, for suspected “coordinated inauthentic behaviour.” (Read more)

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