Facebook Censoring Posts by DNC March Organizers

Spoke to Billy Taylor this morning, the lead organizer for The March on DNC who is working with many groups to coordinate events planned for the thousands of people expected to go to Philadelphia and show the DNC they can't ignore Bernie and our movement. He had some bad news. Facebook itself is actively blocking posts from organizers to their own FB pages for these events

Take a look at a couple of screenshots he sent me:

FB Censoring Philly 2.jpg

And the second one:

FB Censoring Philly.jpg

According to Taylor, these are not isolated incidents. Facebook is preventing the organizers of the Philly events from providing information to the people who we know will be coming to Philadelphia to protest the DNC, you know the people building a wall to keep all of us "peons" and "serfs" out of sight, out of mind, and out of their hair. Even posts with links to the non-Facebook webpages of these organizations are being censored. Critcal information, including requests for donations of food, shelter, tents, water, and medical supplies are not getting sent out.

The gates are being locked up tight to prevent any information about these many events to get out. FYI, Facebook staffers ...

...contribute more to Hillary Clinton than to any other presidential candidate — and among the donors is an executive in charge of trending topics."

At least 78 Facebook employees, who work on everything from engineering to marketing, have funneled cash to Clinton.

They include, Tom Stocky, a vice president whose team oversees trending topics. He donated $2,700, the maximum allowed, on Oct. 26 to Hillary for America, records show

This is not the only accusation that Facebook censors information that would be detrimental to the DNC and/or Hillary Clinton. Wikileaks also accused Facebook of censoring information regarding the release of Hillary Clinton's emails back in March of this year, to name just one example.

On March 16, WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive for 30,322 emails & email attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton’s private email server while she was Secretary of State. The 50,547 pages of documents span from 30 June 2010 to 12 August 2014, Wikileaks said and added that 7,570 of the documents were sent by the former US Secretary of State and now Democratic front-runner for the Presidential elections.

Two days after the publication of the emails, Wikileaks posted a pic on Twitter asking from Facebook to let its users connect with the link which reveals Clinton’s emails. The Twitter post show a pic in which it seems that a Facebook user was unable to get to the archive because Facebook posted a message saying: “Sorry, this action isn’t available right now…As a security precaution you can’t take this action because your computer may be infected with a virus or a malicious browser extension…”

Please spread the word about Facebook censoring and shutting down the speech of the groups and their leaders who are organizing the marches, rallies and other events in Philadelphia during the Democratic National Convention.

Thanks

Steve

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Hope to hear more about this. In other countries and in 1984, it is the government that controls the media. Here it is the corporations and the billionaires who own the corporate media.

I am seldom on Facebook and I am not going to Philly for the march, so without articles like this I would not know about it.

The Intercept, Thom Hartmann, TYT, etc should be notified and pick up this story.

The establishment has lost the battle to maintain neo liberal economics at all costs ...

Naomi Klein posted this yesterday

On the surface, the battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders looks like a deep rift, one that threatens to splinter the Democratic Party. But viewed in the sweep of history, it is evidence of something far more positive for the party’s base and beyond: not a rift but a shift—the first tremors of a profound ideological realignment from which a transformative new politics could emerge.

Taken together, the evidence is clear: The left just won. Forget the nomination—I mean the argument. Clinton, and the 40-year ideological campaign she represents, has lost the battle of ideas. The spell of neoliberalism has been broken, crushed under the weight of lived experience and a mountain of data.

What for decades was unsayable is now being said out loud—free college tuition, double the minimum wage, 100 percent renewable energy. And the crowds are cheering. With so much encouragement, who knows what’s next? Reparations for slavery and colonialism? A guaranteed annual income? Democratic worker co-ops as the centerpiece of a green jobs program? Why not? The intellectual fencing that has constrained the left’s imagination for so long is lying twisted on the ground.

This broad appetite for systemic change did not begin with Sanders. During the Obama years, a wave of radical new social movements emerged, from Occupy Wall Street and the Fight for $15 to #NoKXL and Black Lives Matter. Sanders harnessed much of this energy—but by no means all of it. His weaknesses reaching certain segments of black and Latino voters in the Democratic base are well known. And for some activists, Sanders has always felt too much like the past to get overly excited about.

The Best Has Yet To Come

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FB is good for selfies and pictures of food.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Lisa Lockwood's picture

That's pretty much a thorough summation of FB, as far as I'm concerned
Smile
It's a nice place to post food porn and pics of the fam on vacation, but for organising and activism? Too troll vulnerable and clearly, too easily subverted.
Twitter works better, IMHO, for organising and fast news dissemination.

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"When the powerless are shut out of the media, we will make the media irrelevant" ~Anonymous~

Remember #WhichHillary suddenly vanishing from the trending list?

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Lisa Lockwood's picture

Twitter doesn't (apparently) ((yet!)) censor message content. So if your trying to organize an event, March, protest, etc. the tweet should post just fine, even if it doesn't 'trend' accurately at some point.

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"When the powerless are shut out of the media, we will make the media irrelevant" ~Anonymous~

WindDancer13's picture

a WordPress blog. There are also some other free website/blog builders that are also free. Take it out of mass social media (FB/Twitter/etc.) which is censored and monitored. Bulk emails can also be used. There is also this fancy invention called the telephone.

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass

longtalldrink's picture

FB IS where all the young people hang out, and FB helped put Bernie on the map in cyberworld.

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Well done is better than well said-Ben Franklin

longtalldrink's picture

FB IS where all the young people hang out, and FB helped put Bernie on the map in cyberspace.

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Well done is better than well said-Ben Franklin

longtalldrink's picture

Didn't know the other post took.

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Well done is better than well said-Ben Franklin

Steven D's picture

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Amanda Matthews's picture

other way I bring up the old Facebook and wait until he hops on. I know he's love to unfriend me but he doesn't dare.

EDIT: I would NEVER embarrass him on there unless he was being a sexist pig and then, oh well...

But it is a great tool for tracking the kid down. But first he's gotta make the mistake of 'friending' you.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

ericinsantarosa's picture

The facebook group I am a part of Bay Area For Bernie is super active and we have been connecting very aggressively through it, making plans for action and sharing views. In my view it doesnt help that you are so dismissive. Without that group many people in the san francisco Bay area that are now connected would not be. I don't think i have ever posted a selfie and never post about food

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"If you're on fire, and running down the street, people will get out of your way." Davey- Cordovan Athabascan Native

riverlover's picture

was the top spot for selfies and food. I am behind the times. I still prefer a desktop and my tablet has disappeared and the battery has run low and I can't find it. And I do not like Android, not at all. The tablet will be unburied at some point.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

riverlover's picture

like last week. My FB bell is dinging about 2X/30 sec now. No shutdown of that group. Who is real, however...

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

Alphalop's picture

that John Oliver did on Last week Tonight? About how they "Censored" search results to favor Clinton?

It was pretty damning. I don't see a link for that segment on Youtube yet unfortunately

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"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me

Haikukitty's picture

Not the response to John Oliver, since I haven't seen that one yet. But their response to that article That they ALWAYS censor pairing well-known names with the word criminal in search auto-suggest?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/06/10/google-says-search-isnt-biased-toward-hillary-clinton/85725014/

No, that is not your job, Google. Your job in the recommended searches is simply to reflect what most other people are searching.
Well, technically, I guess their job is whatever they want it to be, since they are a private company, but I think we were led to believe those results reflected what people were actually searching for.

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the hell they want. Prior to Google, there was NO search engine. Now you have a plethora of them to use. Don't like what they do? Then use something like Bing or ASK or anything else you want as a search engine. But in essence, Google only answers to their board, and as the originator of the search engine, they can do what they want.

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Haikukitty's picture

Although on Chrome, you actually can't default to DuckDuckGo for the search bar, at least I haven't figure out how to do it.

Bing is terrible, Yahoo is worse.

Google is really VERY good, but the ads following me around the internet were getting too creepy.

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Free software, no ads. I get it from my browser, Firefox.
Excellent. NO ADS!

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riverlover's picture

Or worse, odd emails (and lucky me, yahoo is my host). Host, such a term.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

snoopydawg's picture

Ghostery is supposed to keep sites from tracking you, but I do more computer stuff in my iPad in the afternoon, so I'm getting weird emails. Still looking for an anti tracker for iPad

I only signed up on FB to sell my photos and then I got friend requests from people from my past. Like my Jr. high school coach and old friends from another state I haven't spoken to in 10 years. How the hell did they know about those friends?

BTW, people have been asking about OPOL. He's busy on FB if anyone wants the link.
I don't know why he quit posting here. I know why he quit posting over there though and I'm glad he did.
There's still some people trying to fight back, but the bots are winning.
Kos wrote another shitty diary and someone called him out on it in another one. Armand was being the biggest dick in it. As usual.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

sojourns's picture

use Firefox? I honestly do not understand why people use Chrome.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

it does a Google search for you. Google doesn't know who you are, so they can't track you.

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On to Biden since 1973

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because it's all the search engines at once.

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Socialprogressive's picture

of reasons why I don't facebook in any way shape or form and have absolutely no use for Mark Fuckerberg.

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When I offer to wash your back in the shower, all you have to say is yes or no.
Not all this "who are you, and how did you get in here?" nonsense.

WaveyDavey's picture

I have never been on facebook and have heard way to many horror stories about data monitoring, and censorship to even consider it. Mark Zuckerberg and sit on my facebook.

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The people, united, will never be defeated.

When I tried to search for Jill Stein with the time filter set for "today". The real results were there for a fraction of a second and then bogus results with no Jill Stein. I think TPTB realize that she is a viable plan B and are trying to shut her down now.

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Beware the bullshit factories.

riverlover's picture

So much for net neutrality. What is the answer? Better, what was the question?

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

but I'm familiar with it. Kids and wife on it all the time. Would it be possible to go to zukerburgs facebook page and bombard him with questions concerning this? Or even create a page that they would probably censor right away....

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If you don't do Facebook. Facebook can't DO You.

I never created an account on the thing, and I have no regrets in not doing so either.

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riverlover's picture

asking users to "friend" him. I have never had the desire. Not so into identity suck-ups.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

with the post I did this morning for your other post Steven. So maybe the group is being targeted because it's bigger and more noticeable? The simple way around that is to do what I did, as a smaller user, have them all post the details anyways. FB can not and won't continue to spend all day and manhours blocking them all. And just keep bombarding with the links each time they try.

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Steven D's picture

were targeted since they are the ones organizing the marches, rallies, and other events. Mr. Taylor is the individual who obtained 4 permits from the city to use FDR Park etc. for such purposes.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Whether or not Facebook's censoring of protest-organizing messages is being done with malicious political intent by the company (I'm no arguing against that!) the reason for the censorship points, imo, to another possibility:

The Occupy movement (and others) have taught us that the Federal government can and will surveil activists and organizers. Some of those surveillance methods include inserting malware packets into individual computers. It is entirely possible that Facebook's computer systems are actually recognizing malware present in activist/organizer computers, which would mean that the FB computers are just doing their job (and could be doing so without any political malice on FB's part).

I think *both* questions should be asked and answered: (1) is the censorship a malicious political act by Facebook? and (2) If FB's systems are legitimately finding malware, when will FB announce this along with identifying the specific malware packages found?

IMO, Facebook has a public obligation as a 'Citizen of the Internet' to reveal the identities of the malware packages being found on citizen's computers, regardless of their source(s), and whether or not the source(s) are yet known.

This malware must be revealed so that the online security professionals who continually review newly-appearing malware can analyze those packages, publish information for the public about the malware, and offer solutions to the public for the malware. Knowing the identities of the malware is also necessary for anti-malware software companies can devise 'fixes' for the public's use.

So, if FB is going to claim 'malware detected' as its reason for censorship, then --

--Facebook, NAME THAT MALWARE!

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riverlover's picture

by some (of many) agencies may have their computers targeted for malware. Or hacked. Malware is an entry point for hackers? So anything involving groups wanting change in the system better have a good IT crew and a hard firewall. Amirite?

I have two software systems (waging battle against each other) scanning for incoming malware. Some (new) always sneaks in, some cannot be totally removed, if I believe the scans. I don't want to scrub my OS and rebuild, I do have multiple remote backups.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

CFland's picture

I sure will.

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CFland

TRNN page or use the search function.

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Solidarity forever

ChemBob's picture

We need to develop our own internet infrastructure and get away from FB, Google, and the like who are taking over the internet.

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Why oh why do people who are supposed to know better turn their lives over to corporate .01%er monstrosities like FB in the first place? Its exceedingly profitable business model consists of gathering up every last scrap of your personal information, packaging it all, and selling it on. Not only that, but the way it structures your use forces what you are as a complete person into pre-defined, easily marketable compartments. And when I try to explain that, all I get are the blank looks and quick dismissals reminiscent of the brainwashed.

Never been on it, never will, and your Facebook can kiss my Assbook.

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I asked each of my friends to share it with all of their friends and also to TWEET THE LINK ADDRESS.. which will spread it even faster...

FUCK ZUCKERBERG'S KORPORATE BULLSHIT-FEED.

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******************************

Muerte al fascismo. Muerte a la tiranía. colapso total de los que promueven tampoco. A la pared con el unico porciento%

I asked each of my friends to share it with all of their friends and also to TWEET THE LINK ADDRESS.. which will spread it even faster...

FUCK ZUCKERBERG'S KORPORATE BULLSHIT-FEED.

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******************************

Muerte al fascismo. Muerte a la tiranía. colapso total de los que promueven tampoco. A la pared con el unico porciento%

ericinsantarosa's picture

The facebook group I am a part of Bay Area For Bernie is super active and we have been connecting very aggressively through it, making plans for action and sharing views. In my view it doesnt help that you are so dismissive. Without that group many people in the san francisco Bay area that are now connected would not be.

By the way, I have never posted a recipe or a selfie on facebook. You don't use facebook, i get that, but you are also missing out on connrecting with a ton of people you will never otherwise connect with.

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"If you're on fire, and running down the street, people will get out of your way." Davey- Cordovan Athabascan Native

I believe Yahoo is connected and may be actually doing the searches, but I have not noticed problems. Goodsearch has been my choice for years because every search you do contributes a penny to whatever charity you choose. Mine is the animal rescue place, Best Friends. Those pennies add up, and the amount that goes to charities, many small and local, is significant.

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Barbara Marquardt